“I think the perception often is, if you can fit it in a glass, it’s one drink,” Dr. LoConte said. But studies have shown that people pouring their own wine or spirits at home tend to underestimate the amount they’re actually consuming. A serving of alcohol is measured by volume, but the amount of alcohol in a serving can vary greatly depending on the variety or brand of beer or wine or the type of mixed drink or cocktail—as well as how much is poured. The COVID-19 pandemic also appears to have caused a spike in drinking among women in the United States and elsewhere, explained Dr. LoConte. “Getting access to alcohol has gotten a lot easier, with things like delivery and drive-through pickup, and women in particular are bearing a huge burden of caregiving, which has led to more drinking,” she said.

This article summarizes the major findings of one such meta-analysis (Corrao et al. 1999, 2000). Alcohol consumption also has been linked to cancers of the large bowel (i.e., colon and rectum) in both men and women and to breast cancer in women, although these associations have not yet been proven unequivocally. Nevertheless, because these are the two most common types of cancer in developed countries after lung cancer, even a moderate increase in risk may result in a relatively large number of additional cases and therefore have important public health implications. The association between alcohol consumption and other types of cancer (e.g., stomach, pancreatic, prostate, and endometrial cancer) is still controversial (International Agency for Research on Cancer IARC 1988; Doll et al. 1999). The association between various levels of alcohol consumption and an increased risk of liver cancer remains difficult to interpret even with the pooled data used in this meta-analysis. This difficulty results from the fact that, as discussed earlier, the association between alcohol consumption and liver cancer is only indirect.

What types of cancer can be caused by drinking alcohol?

Another study published in 2021 showed that nearly 70% of people did not even know that alcohol was a cancer risk factor. Although this study did not present differences in the burden of cancer by type of alcoholic beverage consumed, the evidence suggests that cancer risk increases with consumption of any type of alcohol, whether it is beer, wine, or spirits. Department of Agriculture have defined moderate drinking as no more than one drink per day for women and no more than two drinks per day for men. Researchers have known about the relationship between heavy alcohol consumption and the risk for esophageal and other upper digestive and respiratory tract cancers since the beginning of the last century. Furthermore, substantial epidemiological evidence (as reviewed in this article) accrued over the past 50 years has shown that alcohol contributes to the development of these cancers. Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying alcohol-related cancer development remain largely unclear.

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This balance depends on the age, gender, and baseline disease rates among the members of a given population. Consequently, any definite risk-benefit assessment for moderate alcohol drinking requires much more far-reaching analyses that are beyond the scope of this article but that in the future may provide important information from a public health perspective. A combined analysis of more than 200 studies assessing the link between alcohol and various types of cancer (i.e., a meta-analysis) sought to investigate this association in more detail. This meta-analysis found that alcohol most strongly increased the risks for cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx, esophagus, and larynx. Statistically significant increases in risk also existed for cancers of the stomach, colon, rectum, liver, female breast, and ovaries.

Research published earlier this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows alcohol use among Americans has increased 4% since the pandemic, with heavy drinking rising by 20%. Taken together, if these gaps are filled, they could potentially change what we say about the effects of alcohol on cancer risk, how we communicate that evidence and affect drinking behaviors,” she said. For example, in the case of liver cancer, heavy alcohol consumption is known to cause cirrhosis, a chronic condition in which healthy cells in the liver are replaced with scar tissue, often causing inflammation and ultimately, leading to liver cancer. There likely are additional cancers linked to drinking alcohol, Dr. Orlow says, but more well-designed studies (epidemiological and other) are needed to prove that alcohol is a contributing risk factor. The NCI Alcohol and Cancer Risk Fact Sheet provides a broad overview of alcohol as a risk factor for cancer, and three recent papers explore Division interest in alcohol awareness (7,8) and research needs related to alcohol and cancer prevention and control (9). Evidence from Western countries already strongly indicates that alcohol is a direct cause of cancer in the head, neck, oesophagus, liver, colon and breast.

To this end, researchers have performed comprehensive meta-analyses of published studies investigating the relationship between alcohol intake and the risk for numerous types of cancer. Meta-analyses are studies that pool data from several studies, thereby substantially enhancing the overall number of cases evaluated. This approach allows researchers to detect relationships that may have been overlooked in the individual studies because of the relatively small sample size and insufficient statistical power of those individual studies.

Other risk factors for developing hepatocellular carcinoma include obesity, diabetes, anabolic steroids, iron storage disease and exposure to aflatoxin, a toxin produced by mold that can grow on corn, peanuts and other grains. The liver cancer the authors measured was hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of primary liver cancer – cancer that begins in your liver, rather than spreading to your liver from other organs. Research has shown that when you stop drinking, the risk for alcohol-related cancers declines over time, Bevers says.

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Panelists in the workshop and webinar believe that further research could help clarify the associations of alcohol with risk of cancer types for which the evidence is inconclusive. Additionally, the study didn’t “consider the synergistic effect between alcohol and tobacco, which is reported as a true interaction for most upper aerodigestive tract cancers,” the authors wrote. The cancer estimates for 2020 might have also been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, which disrupted health systems and made some patients feel unsafe going to the doctor, the authors added.

Nevertheless, the research team also asked participants about the purported heart health benefits of alcohol, to see if it was related to their awareness about alcohol and cancer risk. The results of eight appropriate studies were pooled to determine the relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of cancer at all sites combined. This analysis found that alcohol consumption of at least 50 grams (i.e., 4 standard drinks) per day significantly increased the risk of developing any type of cancer.

1. Acetaldehyde interferes with DNA synthesis and repair and causes cytotoxicity and mutagenicity, Gapstur’s paper states.
2. Researchers and health professionals can do more to help break down these misconceptions, Dr. LoConte added.
3. Alcohol use is not independent of other risk factors, therefore research projects addressing alcohol as a target for cancer prevention and control should consider a multi-behavioral framework along with multilevel influences on alcohol use.
4. However, they may not reflect the typical serving sizes people may encounter in daily life.

Accordingly, the cessation or moderation of tobacco and/or alcohol use could avoid the majority of these cancer cases. One of the strengths of this meta-analysis is that the investigators performed a separate analysis of studies that also reported estimates adjusted for tobacco use, which contributes to various forms of cancer, prominently lung cancer. Such analyses were conducted for most cancers of the upper airways and digestive tract, as well as for lung and bladder cancer.

New data from a large-scale genetic study led by Oxford Population Health confirms that alcohol directly causes cancer. The number of individual studies does not add up to the total shown because several Drug & Alcohol Rehab Treatment for Women Near You studies examined more than one type of cancer. “I think limiting alcohol to half a glass of wine a night is unlikely to be dangerous, but every person is different, the metabolism of every person is different,” Bilchik advised.