A team of researchers has calculated the cancer risk associated with moderate levels of alcohol and compared that risk to the cancer risk associated with smoking.
Dr. Theresa Hydes, one of the study authors said, “Our study describes the percentage increase of the risk of cancer within the UK population associated with different levels of alcohol consumption, and is the only study to provide a ‘cigarette equivalent’ in terms of harm.”
She added, “We aimed to answer the question: Purely in terms of cancer risk—that is, looking at cancer in isolation from other harms—how many cigarettes are there in a bottle of wine? Our findings suggest that the ‘cigarette equivalent’ of a bottle of wine is five cigarettes for men and ten for women per week.”
The investigators estimated that for non-smoking men, the risk of developing cancer during their lifetime associated with drinking a bottle of wine a week is 1.0%, while for non-smoking women, it is 1.4%. This means that if 1,000 men and 1,000 women drank a bottle of wine a week, then 10 extra men and 14 extra women are at the risk of developing cancer at some point in their lives.
In men, the risk seems to be related to cancers associated with the gastrointestinal tract, while in women, 55 percent of cases with breast cancer.
The study raises public awareness by stating that drinking moderate levels of alcohol (one bottle of wine a week) may put you at risk of cancer, especially breast cancer in women.
The researchers also found that having three bottles of wine a week, which can increase the risk of a wide range of health issues, was associated with an increased risk of cancer by 1.9% in women and 3.6% in women, which means 19 in 1,000 men and 36 in 1,000 women, respectively. And the risk is equivalent to smoking approximately eight cigarettes a week for men and 23 cigarettes a week for women.
Dr. Hydes said, “We must be absolutely clear that this study is not saying that drinking alcohol in moderation is in any way equivalent to smoking. Our finds relate to lifetime risk across the population. At an individual level, cancer risk represented by drinking or smoking will vary and for many individuals, the impact of ten units of alcohol (one bottle of wine) or five to ten cigarettes may be very different.”
In order to calculate the lifetime risk of cancer associated with drinking ten units of alcohol or smoking ten cigarettes per week, the researchers used the lifetime cancer risk data from Cancer Research UK.
The investigators cautioned that this study is not to make a comparison the overall mortality rate between smoking and alcohol, as they did not consider other non-cancer smoking or alcohol-related outcomes – such as cardiovascular, respiratory or liver disease. “Our estimation of a cigarette equivalent for alcohol provides a useful measure for communicating possible cancer risks that exploits successful historical messaging on smoking. It is well established that heavy drinking is linked to cancer of the mouth, throat, voice box, gullet, bowel, liver and breast,” said Dr. Hydes. “Yet, in contrast to smoking, this is not widely understood by the public. We hope that by using cigarettes as the comparator we could communicate this message more effectively to help individuals make more informed lifestyle choices.”
