Weekly bottle of wine has cancer risk of up to 10 cigarettes

Drinking a bottle of wine a week increases the risk of cancer by as much as smoking between five and 10 cigarettes, research shows.

For women, drinking one bottle a week increases the lifetime risk by as much as smoking 10 cigarettes a week and for men one bottle increases the risk by as much as five cigarettes.

The higher risk for women is explained by the increased risk of breast cancer from drinking, according to researchers from the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Bangor University and University of Southampton.

The team estimated that if 1,000 non-smoking men and 1,000 non-smoking women each drank one bottle of wine per week across their lifetime, around 10 men and 14 women would develop cancer as a result.

And if 1,000 men and 1,000 women drank three bottles of wine per week throughout their lives, around 19 men and 36 women would develop cancer as a result.

Writing in the journal BMC Public Health, the team said one bottle of wine per week was associated with an increased absolute lifetime cancer risk for non-smokers of 1% (men) and 1.4% (women).

Dr Theresa Hydes, who worked on the study, said: “It is well established that heavy drinking is linked to cancer of the mouth, throat, voice box, gullet, bowel, liver and breast.

“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.”

She added: “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.”

Jane Green, professor of epidemiology and co-director of the cancer epidemiology unit at the University of Oxford, said: “It is important to view these results in context.

“For both men and women in the UK, the lifetime risk of cancer is around 50%.

“The authors estimate that lifetime risk is around 1% higher for men and women who drink a bottle of wine a week, or who smoke five to 10 cigarettes a week, than for those who neither smoke nor drink.”

Sophia Lowes, from Cancer Research UK, said: “Research is clear – the less a person drinks, the lower the risk of cancer. Small changes like having more alcohol-free days can make a big difference to how much you drink.

“But smoking causes over four times as many cases of cancer in the UK compared to alcohol. If you’re a smoker, the best thing you can do for your health is stop completely, and you’re most likely to be successful using support from your local free stop-smoking service.”

A spokeswoman from the Alcohol Information Partnership, which is funded by the drinks industry, said: “The conclusions drawn from this study are both unhelpful and confusing at a time when the public is being bombarded by contradictory warnings of risk.

“There are a wide variety of genetic and lifestyle factors that can contribute to an increased risk of cancer and the study itself is clear that drinking in moderation is not equivalent to smoking.”

(c) Sky News 2019: Weekly bottle of wine has cancer risk of up to 10 cigarettes