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Booze linked to breast disease, girls warned

The Globe and Mail, Fri Nov 18 2011 - Adolescent girls and young women with a family history of breast cancer would be well advised to avoid alcohol - or at least limit the amount they drink. A new study suggests that booze can give an additional boost to their already elevated chances of developing the disease. "The more you drink, the higher your risk," said the senior author of the study, Graham Colditz of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study, one of the first to look at early alcohol consumption and breast disease, began in 1996 with more than 9,000 girls between the ages of nine and 15. In subsequent years, they completed a series of questionnaires that tracked their family medical history, alcohol consumption, height, weight, age of first menstrual cycle and other factors associated with increased odds of developing breast cancer.

In 2005 and 2007, when the participants were between the ages of 18 and 27, they were asked if they had been diagnosed with benign breast disease that includes lumps, pain and lesions, which are known risk factors for breast cancer. As expected, young women whose mothers or aunts had breast cancer were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with benign breast disease compared to those with no family history. When the researchers then took drinking habits into account, alcohol consumption further increased the risk. The more alcohol the girls consumed, the more likely they were to develop benign breast disease, according to the results published this week in the journal Cancer.

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Booze linked to breast disease, girls warned

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