Glass of wine, beer daily enough to raise cancer, heart disease risk: study

By Stephen Beech

One glass of wine or pint of beer a day is enough to increase the risk of cancer and heart disease, warns new research.

Even what most people consider a "moderate" or sensible level of alcohol intake "substantially" elevates the dangers of dying young, disability and chronic diseases, say scientists.

The new study found a mortality risk from alcohol of one in 25 for people who consumed an average of just 14 drinks per week.

Drinking up to seven drinks per week was associated with "minimally elevated" risks for most conditions, according to the findings published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Called the Alcohol Intake and Health Study, the research was initially commissioned by the U.S. federal government to inform development of new U.S. Dietary Guidelines.

Study lead author Kevin Shield said: "Even low levels of alcohol use come with health risks.

"And that risk continues to increase the more someone drinks."

Shield, of the University of Toronto, Canada, and his co-authors from the United States and Canada aimed to estimate how lifetime drinking habits affect the risk of illness and death related to alcohol.

After medical experts reviewed more than 7,200 scientific articles on alcohol-related diseases and injuries to determine the level of risk for each condition, the team applied those risks to large national health data sets.

They then used statistical modeling to estimate how different drinking levels influence long-term health outcomes.

The researchers say their findings offer more concrete guidance than the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which currently advise people to "limit alcoholic beverages" without specifying how much alcohol is safe to drink.

Previous guidelines recommended a daily limit of two alcoholic drinks for men and one for women.

Study co-author Timothy Naimi, of Boston University, said: "While the new U.S. Dietary Guidelines contain a useful 'less-is-best' message, they provide no quantitative framework.

"Our study was designed to do just that across the drinking spectrum.

"It turns out that two drinks per day, which might be considered 'moderate' from a social standpoint, is associated with a substantially elevated risk of a premature death caused by alcohol."

The research team also examined how drinking patterns influence chronic and acute alcohol-related conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, and injury.

The study overturns a common misconception that alcohol can protect health.

Shield said: "We did not observe a significant protective effect of alcohol on health at any level of consumption.

"At low levels, alcohol may be associated with a reduced risk of ischemic heart disease and stroke.

"But when you look across the full range of health outcomes, including cancer and other chronic diseases, those potential benefits are outweighed by the risks even at seven drinks per week."

Shield, who leads the World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Collaborating Centre in Addiction and Mental Health, says statistical modeling used in the study to determine health risks was based on "the best possible data."

He said: "However, we can't assume that means one person's individual health risk is the same as what is reported here - that depends on other factors like lifestyle, genetics, drinking patterns, and other choices that differ person to person."

The research team estimated risk for all health conditions known to be causally related to alcohol and then aggregated the estimates to determine the total health risk.

But they said new research continues to emerge that links alcohol with additional health conditions, such as pancreatic cancer.

Shield said: "Understanding those relationships, and how much alcohol contributes to those risks, is an area that still needs further work."

By finding that alcohol consumption is associated with increased risk above one drink per day for both men and women, Shield says the study offers a "much-needed" benchmark.

He added: "Having a clearer threshold helps people better understand what level of drinking is associated with increased risk and make more informed decisions when drinking."