A new study published in BMC Public Health suggests that drinking one 750-milliliter bottle of wine each week is equivalent to smoking five or 10 cigarettes in terms of cancer risk. Specifically, there is a 1 percent increase in lifetime cancer risk for non-smoker males and a 1.4 percent increase for females, which equals five and 10 cigarettes, respectively.
As per KRON 4, the study is the first-ever to determine the cigarette equivalent of alcohol in terms of cancer risk.
"It is well-established that heavy drinking is linked to cancer of the mouth, throat, voice box, gullet, bowel, liver and breast," said lead study author Dr. Theresa Hydes of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.
"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."
Dr. Sarah Cate, assistant professor of breast surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who was not involved in the study, agrees that alcohol is a known carcinogen. However, she claims that the data from the current study is difficult to interpret risk from because it ignored known cancer risk factors, such as family history and external radiation exposure. Regardless, she believes that it's important to educate the public about the dangers of alcohol.
