By David Liu, PHD

Wednesday March 3, 2013 (foodconsumer.org) -- A new case-control study in Cancer Causes & Control suggests that drinking alcohol can increase the risk of prostate cancer.

Those who drank the highest amount of alcohol in their lifetime were up to 78% more likely than those who drank the lowest amount to be diagnosed with non-aggressive prostate cancer, according to the study report.  The positive association was found both for non-aggressive and aggressive prostate cancers.  For the latter, the increase induced by alcohol consumption was up to 100%.

The study led by S. Elizabeth McGregor and colleagues involved 947 cases of stage T2 or higher prostate cancer diagnosed between 1997 and 2000 and 1,039 controls without the disease.

The researchers know alcohol consumption may be a risk factor for prostate cancer and their study was intended to examine how lifetime exposure to alcohol and specific alcoholic beverages may affect the risk of prostate cancer in men of the study residing in Alberta, Canada.

Although current alcohol consumption was not associated with increased risk for prostate cancer, lifetime intake of alcohol was correlated with increased the  risk for both non-aggressive and aggressive cases ,compared with non-drinkers.

The study also found only lifetime beer intake was significantly correlated with increased risk for prostate cancer and no association was found between drinking liquor and wine and the risk of prostate cancer due to the fact that intakes of liquor and wine by the study participants were too low for a possible association to be detected.

In the U.S., the National Toxicology Program has recognized alcoholic beverages as human carcinogens.  In addition to prostate cancer, alcohol can increase the risk for other malignancies like breast cancer.

Prostate cancer is diagnosed in more than 230,000 men in the U.S. each year and the disease kills about 17,000 annually in the country.   This disease in many cases is preventable.  Reducing intakes of meat and dairy products is one thing that every man can do to reduce his risk for the disease.

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