A second study shows that specific variations within two genes involved in metabolizing alcohol are associated with an increased risk for breast cancer in postmenopausal women.
While the studies do not prove cause and effect, they lend plausibility to growing evidence implicating drinking as a risk factor for breast cancer, a specialist in cancer prevention at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Some breast tumors are fueled by hormones, while others are not. In the first study, National Cancer Institute (NCI) researchers wanted to determine if the hormone status of a tumor influences the relationship between alcohol use and breast cancer risk.
Overall, moderate drinking raised the risk of developing breast cancer, regardless of whether a woman's preference was for beer, wine, or hard liquor. And the more she drank, the greater the risk.
But most of the increased risk was seen in women whose tumors were fueled by both estrogen and progesterone.
