The findings, expected to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, in San Diego, urges women to evaluate the history of breast cancer within their families, before indulging in excessive alcoholic consumption, especially when undergoing hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Laboratory studies have proven that alcohol affects estrogen metabolism and results in hormone-sensitive breast cancer, indicated as ER+/PR+ (estrogen receptor positive/progesterone receptor positive), which accounts for about 70 percent of all cases of breast cancer.
Jasmine Q. Lew, a University of Chicago medical student and first author of the study, reviewed data on 184,418 postmenopausal women in 1995. After seven years, follow-up studies identified 70 percent of the women as drinking every day faced an increased risk for breast cancer development.
Lew, who is a member of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, said who had less than one drink a day had a 7 percent increased risk of breast cancer compared to teetotalers, the team reported. Women who drank one to two drinks a day had a 32 percent increased risk, and those who had three or more glasses of alcohol a day had up to a 51 percent increased risk.
However, the risk was similar whether women consumed primarily beer, wine or spirits.
