One drink a day raises risk of alcohol-linked cancers by 10pc
There is low community awareness about the link between most of these cancers and alcohol, says Dr Peter Sarich, a post-doctoral research fellow at Cancer Council NSW, who led the study.
There is an urgent need to raise awareness of the link between cancer and alcohol, says Dr Sarich.
“While liver cancer comes first to mind with alcohol, surprisingly the biggest impact – in terms of population – is for breast and bowel cancer.”
He says currently alcohol causes 800 breast cancers and 1300 bowel cancers a year. It also causes 175 liver cancers.
In the study, the relative risk of liver cancer rose by 48 per cent in medium volume drinkers (seven to 14 drinks a week) and by hefty 202 per cent in heavy drinkers.
Over a lifetime, Dr Sarich says for every 100 people having more than 14 drinks per week, about five will develop cancer due to alcohol by age 85.
This most commonly occurs in breast cancer for women and bowel cancer for men.
He says the study, which analysed data from 226,000 participants from the Sax Institute’s 45 & Up Study, highlights the urgent need to raise awareness of the link between cancer and alcohol.
The authors would like to see government campaigns to raise awareness. They also call for the implementation of policies to address pricing, availability and advertising of alcohol, that have been shown to help reduce alcohol use in the community.
No amount of alcohol is regarded as healthy (despite the debate about cardiac benefits) and the current National Health and Medical Research Council guideline recommendation that Australians limit themselves to a maximum of 14 drinks per week, is set to be reduced to 10.
So how many Australians are drinking dangerously? The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says one in six exceed 14 drinks a week and of them, about 40 per cent are heavy drinkers.
“We often focus on young people and harmful drinking, but this study sheds light on the risks to older Australians, who continue to be more likely to exceed alcohol risk guidelines than their younger counterparts,” says Clare Hughes, chair of Cancer Council Australia’s nutrition and physical activity committee.
“It is important government interventions target this population given evidence that more than half of risky drinkers aged over 50 years in Australia do not perceive their level of drinking to be harmful, and instead identify as light, occasional or social drinkers.”
Published at Mon, 12 Oct 2020 04:18:45 +0000