Heavy drinking increases a person’s risk of colon cancer over their lifetime, a new study says.
People who routinely have 14 or more drinks a week have a higher risk of colon and rectal cancer compared to those who partake in little to no alcohol, researchers reported Jan. 26 in the journal Cancer.
It also appears that people who stop drinking have lower odds of developing pre-cancerous polyps in their colon, researchers found.
“Our study is one of the first to explore how drinking alcohol over the life course relates to both colorectal adenoma and colorectal cancer risk. While the data on former drinkers were sparse, we were encouraged to see that their risk may return to that of the light drinkers,” co–senior researcher Erikka Loftfield said in a news release. She’s an investigator at the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
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For the study, researchers tracked the average lifetime alcohol intake of more than 88,000 Americans enrolled in an NCI cancer screening trial between 1993 and 2001. Among those people, 1,679 colorectal cancer cases occurred.
Current drinkers with an average lifetime alcohol intake of 14 or more drinks per week had a 25% higher risk of developing colon cancer and a 95% higher risk of rectal cancer, compared to those who had less than one drink per week, the study found.
People who maintained consistent heavy drinking throughout adulthood had a 91% increased risk of colon cancer, compared to consistent light drinking, researchers found.
But people who stopped drinking had 42% lower odds of developing precancerous polyps in their colon, compared to current drinkers averaging less than one drink per week, the study found.
Researchers said these associations might be driven by carcinogens produced when the gut processes alcohol or by other effects that alcohol might have on gut microbes.
Results also showed that moderate alcohol intake — seven to 13 drinks per week — was associated with a 21% lower risk of colon cancer compared to less than one drink per week.
Further research is needed to understand how heavy drinking might drive colon cancer, researchers said.