13,000 cancers each year down to drinking
About one in ten cancers in men and one in 33 cancers in women in Western Europe is caused by alcohol, a European study has calculated. That amounts to at least 13,000 cases of cancer a year in the UK, according to the report published in the British Medical Journal - around 9,000 in men and 4,000 in women. The researchers, including scientists at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University, argue that a substantial proportion (40 to 98%) of the cancers attributable to alcohol occurred in individuals who drank more than the recommended guidelines, which suggest upper limits of two drinks a day in men and one drink a day in women. 'This research supports existing evidence that alcohol causes cancer and that the risk increases even with drinking moderate amounts,' said Dr Naomi Allen of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University, one of the authors of the study. The group looked at how different levels of drinking affect the risk of cancer using data from the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer (EPIC). They combined this with figures on how much people drink, to give the number of cancers that can be attributed to alcohol. The study focussed on the following countries: France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Greece, Germany and Denmark.
