"Even moderate, light drinking increases risk" of cancer, per the author of a new report. The good news: Quitting or reducing alcohol intake can reduce cancer risk, too.

Reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption reduces the risk of developing oral cavity and esophagus cancers, according to a special report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. But more data are needed to conclude whether the same is true for several other cancer types, including colorectal, breast, and liver cancer.

Even so, it is likely that reducing or ceasing to drink alcohol will lessen the risk of these cancers, said Farhad Islami, a cancer epidemiologist at the American Cancer Society and an author of the report. “Given that many of these cancers have similar mechanistic pathways, we think we will see a similar association with reduction or cessation,” he said. “That’s why we recommend more studies, so we can have stronger evidence.”

Over the last couple of decades, studies have strongly established that consuming alcohol does raise the risk that people will develop several cancers, including breast, colorectal, liver, oral, esophageal, and more, Islami said. “That’s already established,” he said. “But we wanted to know, what if people stop drinking?”

    • MicroWave@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      The article answers that for you:

      What’s the utility behind understanding how cancer risk declines after alcohol cessation or reduction if we already know that alcohol consumption leads to cancer?

      So, we know this for smoking already. We found if someone stops smoking now, after one decade their risk of cardiovascular disease goes down by 60%. Risk of cancer and related diseases go down, compared to current smokers, by 50%. We want to look at this kind of data for alcohol, but unfortunately there are not much data to say how long it takes to eliminate the risk from alcohol.

      It’s important because there are some exposures where you may not see a lot of benefits after you reduce or eliminate the exposure. Some viral infections, like hep b or c, are like this. That’s why the hepatitis vaccine is recommended early in life. We also want to see this kind of evidence before recommending guidelines for people, and these kinds of studies help us to create risk predictions in the future. It can help policymakers increase awareness or find ways to reduce consumption of alcohol in the population.