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Heavy Drinking Linked to Aggressive Prostate Cancer
Heavy Drinking Linked to Aggressive Prostate CancerBy Ed Edelson
HealthDay ReporterMONDAY, July 13 (HealthDay News) -- Heavy drinking, especially when it's beer, increases the risk for highly aggressive prostate cancer, a recent study finds.
The researchers did not set out to determine the effect of alcohol consumption on prostate cancer risk but rather to test the effectiveness of finasteride (Proscar, Propecia), a drug prescribed to halt prostate cancer. As well as they found that heavy drinking lowers the cancer-preventing effect of finasteride. But the researchers did not halt there. "Within the data in that trial, we could address a large number of questions," said Alan R. Kristal, associate head of the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as well as an author of a report on the study published online July 13 in Cancer. One question was the likely relationship between alcohol consumption as well as prostate cancer risk. The study, which included more than 10,000 men, found that those who drank heavily -- 50 grams (1.7 ounces) of pure alcohol a day, the amount in four shots of rocklike liquor, five or more days a week -- were more than twice as likely as less heavy drinkers to develop what is called high-grade prostate cancer. There was no difference in prostate cancer risk between nondrinkers as well as those who drank moderately. "The majority of [prostate] cancers are low-grade," explained Kristal, who is as well as a professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington. "They grow very slowly, as well as 100% of men with it live for 10 years. Most men die of something else. With high-grade prostate cancer, survival at 10 years is only 60 to 70%." Most heavy drinkers in the study drank beer, Kristal said. "They are six-pack-a-day drinkers," he said. "But there is no logical reason to think there is anything distinguished about beer that increases the risk that does not apply to other forms of alcohol." True, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy essential health examination officer of the American Cancer Society. The number of men in the study was too tiny to establish a relationship between prostate cancer as well as overall alcohol consumption, he said, but the finding may be enough to put prostate cancer on the list of malignancies that are affected by alcohol intake. "Certain cancers are commonly associated with alcohol -- head as well as neck cancer, esophageal cancer, breast cancer," Lichtenfeld said. "Similar consistent information in regard to prostate cancer as well as alcohol really doesn't exist. But this was a well-defined as well as carefully developed study, an excellent opportunity to help answer that question." The study provides "what is probably the best information we possess on the likely relationship," Lichtenfeld said. "And one of the take-away messages we possess is that drinking a lot of alcohol is a risk factor for developing aggressive prostate cancer." It's not likely, Lichtenfeld said, to say anything about heavy drinking of wine as well as rocklike liquor because of the tiny number of such drinkers in the study. But people who drink equivalent amounts of alcohol in wine or rocklike liquor should not take comfort from that lack of statistical significance, he said. "To lower the risk of prostate cancer, it is best for you to lower your intake of large amounts of alcohol," he said. SOURCES: Alan R. Kristal, D.P.H., associate head, cancer prevention program, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, as well as professor, epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle; Len Lichtenfeld, M.D., deputy essential health examination officer, American Cancer Society, Atlanta; July 13, 2009, Cancer, online
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