Alcohol use linked to 7,000 new cancer cases in Canada

 

Alcohol use linked to 7,000 new cancer cases in Canada in 2020, study shows

With alcohol sales and consumption way up amid the pandemic, medical professionals and alcohol-free advocates are recommending rethinking drinking. The movement asks women in particular to push back on pandemic drinking for increased happiness and health.

Researchers from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health say alcohol was linked to thousands of cancer cases in Canada last year, and that even mild to moderate drinking poses risk of developing the disease in the future.

Those findings are part of a modelling study from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that was published this week in the journal Lancet Oncology.

The global study estimates the effect of alcohol consumption on cancers worldwide, suggesting four per cent of newly diagnosed cases in 2020 may have been associated with drinking alcohol.

In Canada, researchers said alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cancer cases in 2020, including 24 per cent of breast cancer cases, 20 per cent of colon cancers, 15 per cent of rectal cancers, and 13 per cent of oral and liver cancers.

The study found that most of those alcohol-related cancer cases worldwide were associated with heavier drinking patterns, but researchers estimated that light to moderate drinking – around one or two drinks per day – contributed to more than 100,000 cases in 2020, or one in seven.

“People say, ‘Well, everything causes cancer,’ but I would stress that alcohol is a Class 1 carcinogen defined by IARC,” study co-author Kevin Shield, a scientist at CAMH’s Institute for Mental Health Policy Research, said Wednesday.

“This study establishes that it’s a leading cause of cancer globally, and with increases in alcohol consumption (during the COVID-19 pandemic), we are going to see it go up even further.”

IARC includes 121 cancer-causing agents on its list of Class 1 carcinogens on its website, including alcohol, tobacco, ultraviolet radiation and outdoor air pollution. Alcohol can worsen the cancer-causing effects of other substances such as tobacco, the study said.

Shield said there are many ways in which alcohol consumption can lead to cancer, but the main mechanism is by damaging DNA.

“It takes a key number of mutations in your DNA to cause cancer. But over time, what happens is those damages accumulate,” he said. “So unfortunately, (if) you drink today, you drink tomorrow, you drink the next day, every drinking occasion is increasing your risk.”