Alcohol Intake, Beverage Choice, and Cancer: A Cohort Study in a Large Kaiser Permanente Population
CONTEXT: Heavy intake of alcoholic beverages is associated with an increased risk of developing several types of cancers at specific body sites. However, evidence is conflicting regarding alcohol-associated cancers in other sites of the body as well as the role played by choice of wine, liquor, or beer.
OBJECTIVE: To study incident cancer risk from 1978 to 1985 and through follow-up in 2012 relative to light-to-moderate and heavy drinking and to the choice of alcoholic beverage in a cohort of 124,193 persons.
DESIGN: Cohort.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: 1) Cox proportional hazards models controlled for 7 covariates to analyze alcohol-associated risk of any cancer and multiple specific types. 2) Similar analyses in strata of drinkers with or without a preponderant choice of wine, liquor, or beer and with or without inferred likelihood of underreporting.
RESULTS: With lifelong abstainers as referent, heavy drinking (>/= 3 drinks per day) was associated with increased risk of 5 cancer types: upper airway/digestive tract, lung, female breast, colorectal, and melanoma, with light-to-moderate drinking related to all but lung cancer. No significantly increased risk was seen for 12 other cancer sites: stomach, pancreas, liver, brain, thyroid, kidney, bladder, prostate, ovary, uterine body, cervix, and hematologic system. For all cancers combined there was a progressive relationship with all levels of alcohol drinking. These associations were largely independent of smoking, but among light-to-moderate drinkers there was evidence of confounding by inferred underreporting. Beverage choice played no major independent role.
CONCLUSION: Heavy alcohol drinking is related to increased risk of some cancer types but not others. Because of probable confounding, the role of light-to-moderate drinking remains unclear.
Additional Info
-
Authors
Klatsky A.L.; Li Y.; Tran H.N.; Baer D.; Udaltsova N.; Armstrong M.A.; Friedman G.D. -
Issue
Perm J. 2015 Mar 1. doi: 10.7812/TPP/14-189. [Epub ahead of print] -
Published Date
1 march 2015
Related items
- Diet-wide analyses for risk of colorectal cancer: prospective study of 12,251 incident cases among 542,778 women in the UK
- Alcohol consumption trajectories and risk of breast cancer among postmenopausal women: a Danish cohort study
- Alcoholic beverage consumption and female breast cancer risk: A systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies
- Is there a link between per capita alcohol consumption and cancer mortality?
- Increasing rates of early-onset Luminal A breast cancers correlate with binge drinking patterns