Alcohol Linked to Cancer Risk in Women

Postmenopausal women, who consume two or more alcoholic beverages a day may double their risk of endometrial cancer, a U.S. study suggested.

Researchers at the University of Southern California used data from an epidemiological study of more than 215,000 people from Los Angeles and Hawaii created in 1993 by Dr. Brian Henderson, dean of the Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California and Dr. Laurence Kolonel, of the University of Hawaii.

The researchers tracked 41,574 postmenopausal African-American, Japanese-American, Latina, Native-Hawaiian and white women in Los Angeles and Hawaii for an average of eight years.

This is the first prospective study to report a significant association between alcohol and endometrial cancer, Veronica Wendy Setiawan of the Keck School of Medicine said in a statement. Previous studies have shown that alcohol consumption has been associated with higher levels of estrogens in postmenopausal women, which could be the mechanism by which daily alcohol intake increases one’s risk of endometrial cancer.

The study is published in the International Journal of Cancer and available online.