Study: More Than 2 Drinks at a Time Ups Breast Cancer Risk

Premenopausal women who have more than two drinks at a time are at 80 percent greater risk of developing breast cancer than lighter drinkers -- even if they both consume the same total amount of alcohol in a week, according to University of Buffalo researchers.

"In our study, if a woman had five alcoholic drinks a week, the effect on breast-cancer risk was greater when the drinks were consumed on one or two occasions than if she had only one drink on any one day," said researcher Jo L. Freudenheim.

"We are not sure why there was this difference," Freudenheim told a meeting of the Society for Epidemiologic Researchers. "But it could be that the higher alcohol load at one time taxes the body's ability to handle alcohol's potentially toxic effects."

The University of Buffalo study involved 1,120 women with confirmed breast cancer and 2,240 healthy controls matched to those with cancer by age and race.

Freudenheim said that while having more than two drinks at a time, also significantly increased breast-cancer risk for premenopausal women, it did not appear to increase risk of breast cancer for postmenopausal women.

But Saverio Stranges, a research instructor at the University of Buffalo, said the results clearly suggest that "if you drink, drink in moderation and in a healthy way, with food, and spread the consumption over a longer period of time, rather than in a short period, such as a weekend."

Other Sources: University of Buffalo