| Alcohol linked to 20pc of breast cancer cases By Barbara Miller Posted 1 hour 58 minutes ago The Cancer Council says alcohol is a much bigger contributor to cancer than previously thought, adding that the latest evidence suggests drinking is the cause of 5 per cent of all cancer cases in Australia. The figure rises to more than 20 per cent for breast cancer cases.
Cancer Council chief executive Professor Ian Olver says the evidence of the link between alcohol and cancer is very strong.
Professor Olver says it is correct to say alcohol causes cancer. He says it is a Class 1 carcinogen, meaning it is just as likely to cause cancer as tobacco or asbestos.
He says is it important that women at risk of breast cancer know that cutting their alcohol consumption is a way of reducing their chances of developing the disease.
"Originally we had linked alcohol with rather rarer cancers like liver and head and neck cancer, but the newer data is that the very common cancers, bowel cancer and surprisingly to us, breast cancer, [are also linked]," he said.
"We know alcohol does interfere with the balance of female hormones, so there is a very strong link with how it could cause something like breast cancer, but we didn't expect it to be quite that high."
Professor Olver says reducing alcohol consumption will reduce the risk of cancer but he says it would be wrong to assume that cutting consumption by half would also result in the same reduction in cancer risk.
He says the more alcohol a person consumes, the more chance they have of getting cancer.
Professor Olver says the risk of cancer is quite small if a person consumes only a couple of alcoholic drinks per day.
"I mean it is like everything else. There is a balance here and that's why when the [National Health and Medical Research Council] came out and said 'look, two standard drinks a day is probably relatively safe', we would agree with that," he said.
| 
发表于 2011-5-2 11:47