Health scare of the week: Alcohol’s ties to breast cancer

last updated 8 January 2015

Just a few alcoholic drinks a week are enough to raise a woman’s breast-cancer risk, a new study suggests. Harvard University researchers tracked the drinking habits of more than 100,000 women over 28 years and found that just three glasses of wine or beer per week increased their breast-cancer risk by 15 percent compared with teetotalers. Downing more than two glasses a day increased their risk by 50 percent. And even if women quit drinking later in life, their alcohol consumption between ages 18 and 40 still had some effect—probably because imbibing raises levels of estrogen, which speeds breast-cancer growth. “The bad news is you can’t really change what you did in the past,” study author Wendy Y. Chen tells WebMD.com. But, she says, drinking less at any age can improve breast-cancer odds.

Before abstaining, though, “you have to weigh the risks and benefits,” says Susan Love, a UCLA professor of surgery. Moderate drinking is known to lower the risk of stroke and heart disease, which the average woman has a 50 percent chance of developing at some point in her life; the average chance of developing breast cancer is 12 percent.