Study: Alcohol Raises Breast Cancer Recurrence Risk

Posted on December 13, 2009 by Lolita Carrico

A new study found that cancer is 34% more likely to come back in breast cancer survivors who drink more than three alcoholic beverages a week, compared with those who abstain or drink less.

Drinking more than three drinks a week also raised the risk of dying from breast cancer by 51%, says Marilyn L. Kwan, PhD, one of the researchers with Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California.

Though it has been found that alcohol consumption is linked to an increased risk of developing breast cancer, this is the first study to examine alcohol’s effect on women who have already been diagnosed with the disease.

Kwan and her associates followed 1,897 women who had been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer between 1997 and 2000. About a year after diagnosis, they were asked whether they drank alcohol, how much they drank, and their drink of choice.

Over the next eight years, 349 of the women suffered a recurrence of their breast cancer, and 332 died of the disease.

“We don’t think the type of alcohol mattered, but it was difficult to examine since 90% of the women in our study drank wine,” Kwan said. But how much they drank did matter; women who indulged in two or more glasses of wine per day were most likely to suffer a recurrence, she says.