Alcohol can cause cancer in men, women: study

[Shwa]

From the Star this morning:

Alcohol can cause cancer in men, women: study

LONDON—Drinking too much alcohol might account for as much as 10 per cent of cancer cases in men and three per cent in women in Europe, according to results of a new study published Thursday.

Too much alcohol might also be responsible for almost 45 per cent of cancers in the mouth, larynx and throat in men and 25 per cent of those cancers in women, according to the results published Thursday in a medical journal, BMJ.

“A considerable proportion of the most common and most lethal cancers is attributable to former and current alcohol consumption,” wrote Manuela Bergmann of the Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke in Nuthetal, Germany, and colleagues. The research was paid for by numerous European health agencies.

In other words, it can still get you. Now I am sure this is bad news for all the party airplane beer companies, but if you get drunk enough, you become unaware of the dangers getting drunk enough will cause.

Here is the article from BMJ:

Alcohol attributable burden of incidence of cancer in eight European countries based on results from prospective cohort study

[Jack Weber]

Why do ya gotta be such a downer,man?

[GostHacked]

Could be all that genetically modified stuff we make alcohol out of.

[eyeball]

People could always try unwinding with safer drugs at the end of a hard day's work.

[Bonam]

Could be all that genetically modified stuff we make alcohol out of.

Or, much more likely, it could just be the well known toxic effects of the ethanol itself.

[GostHacked]

Or, much more likely, it could just be the well known toxic effects of the ethanol itself.

Alcohol is a sugar, which overtime will damage the liver, which can cause all sorts of other things, possibly like cancer.

[Bonam]

Alcohol is a sugar

No, it's not. It is fermented from sugars but ethanol is not a sugar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol

The long term health effects of Ethanol arise from the fact that its first metabolic product in the human body is Acetaldehyde, which is toxic and carcinogenic.

Edited April 8, 2011 by Bonam

[scouterjim]

From the Star this morning:

Alcohol can cause cancer in men, women: study

In other words, it can still get you. Now I am sure this is bad news for all the party airplane beer companies, but if you get drunk enough, you become unaware of the dangers getting drunk enough will cause.

Here is the article from BMJ:

Alcohol attributable burden of incidence of cancer in eight European countries based on results from prospective cohort study

Show me something that DOESN'T cause cancer. Seems everything in existance can cause cancer according to scientists.

[cybercoma]

I would like to see the actual study and be sure that they controlled for smoking, since often times the behaviours go together for people.

[WIP]

From the Star this morning:

Alcohol can cause cancer in men, women: study

In other words, it can still get you. Now I am sure this is bad news for all the party airplane beer companies, but if you get drunk enough, you become unaware of the dangers getting drunk enough will cause.

Here is the article from BMJ:

Alcohol attributable burden of incidence of cancer in eight European countries based on results from prospective cohort study

I quit drinking years ago, largely because of having to work a couple of years as a bartender, and getting sick of the smell of the stuff, and the smell and the stupidity of its frequent consumers. In my older years, I have become curious about the frequent claims that a moderate consumption of wine provides protection against heart disease, since my LDL levels are borderlinem in spite of maintaining a high fitness level. Anyway, not that I am all of a sudden going to become a drinker again, I am still curious about where (if anywhere) the actual science is in these claims and counterclaims over the last 30 years.

[bloodyminded]

From the Star this morning:

Alcohol can cause cancer in men, women: study

In other words, it can still get you. Now I am sure this is bad news for all the party airplane beer companies, but if you get drunk enough, you become unaware of the dangers getting drunk enough will cause.

Here is the article from BMJ:

Alcohol attributable burden of incidence of cancer in eight European countries based on results from prospective cohort study

Goddamn it. Quitting smoking wasn't enough of a hardship?

[Shwa]

I would like to see the actual study and be sure that they controlled for smoking, since often times the behaviours go together for people.

If you click the link to the BMJ Abstract there is a link on that page to the full article.

All models were run separately for men and women, and included the following potential confounders, which were measured at recruitment: smoking (never; past <10 years ago, ≥10 years ago; current <15, 15-25, or ≥25 cigarettes/day, other (cigars, pipe, cigarettes with missing dose)) and smoking duration (<10, 10-<20, 20-<30, 30-<40, ≥40 years, missing (4.1%));

[Sir Bandelot]

Breaking news, life causes cancer. Being alive, eating food, breathing, going for a walk on a sunny day. If you live long enough, you'll get it. No one actually dies of old age, but as they age their immune system weakens and leaves them susceptible to disease. Almost 100% of males beyond the age of 70 have prostate cancer. They often die from other things, heart disease, pnumonea but the cancer is there. Don't fear it.

Just be reasonable in what you consume and what you do. Excess stupidity leads to early failure, it's just natures way, to eliminate the inferior/ defective ones in the gene pool.

But despite how "good" you can be, the reaper still gonna get you anyway, some day.

Edited April 9, 2011 by Sir Bandelot

[cybercoma]

If you click the link to the BMJ Abstract there is a link on that page to the full article.

Thanks for that. I just haven't had the time to look through it.

It looks like the did consider the effects of smoking:

As smoking seemed to modify the association between alcohol and cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract and liver in men and colorectal cancer in women, we also computed hazard rate ratios for alcohol intake (continuous, per 12 g/day and for former v never consumers) and cancer incidence among never smokers. For upper aerodigestive tract and liver cancer the number of cases became low in men. We therefore computed the hazard rate ratios in never smokers for men and women combined with additional adjustment for sex. Alcohol attributable fractions were recomputed by replacing the smoking adjusted hazard rate ratios from the total EPIC cohort by the hazard rate ratios in never smokers.

[cybercoma]

And it looks like smoking complicates their findings, while having a limited number of "never smokers" further muddies the results:

A possible synergistic effect modification of smoking on the risk of alcohol and cancer could lead to an overestimation of the alcohol attributable fraction.52 We observed a substantially higher alcohol attributable fraction for liver cancer and a considerably lower alcohol attributable fraction for upper aerodigestive tract cancer in men when we applied the hazard rate ratios for alcohol consumption among never smokers. Potential effect modification by smoking was also indicated for colorectal cancer in women, for which the alcohol attributable fraction computed by using hazard rate ratios among never smokers was lower than the overall alcohol attributable fraction, but within the 95% confidence interval. In the groups of never smokers the number of cases of cancer was limited in the EPIC study, which led to a limited power to assess the association between the consumption of alcohol and risk of cancer in this subgroup.

Interesting work though. They very well could be on to something important.