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Will giving up alcohol prevent breast cancer?
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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Researchers found that teenage girls who drank alcohol and had a family history of breast cancer were twice as likely to develop benign breast tumors as non-drinkers.
Benign breast diseases are not dangerous in themselves, but they are a prerequisite for the development of breast cancer in the future.
Study author Katherine Berkey, of Boston, says teen girls and young women with a family history of breast cancer should be aware that drinking alcohol increases the risk of developing benign breast disease and, later, breast cancer.
Berkey and her colleagues, whose work is published in the journal Cancer, followed 7,000 girls from 1996, when they were aged 9 to 15, to 2007. Seventeen percent of the girls had a mother, aunt or grandmother with breast cancer.
The rate of benign breast disease among female drinkers (about one alcoholic drink per day) at age 22 was 3.1%, compared with 1.3% among non-drinkers.
This is not the first study to show a link between alcohol and breast cancer.
Earlier this month, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that 2.8 percent of women who don't drink will develop breast cancer over the next 10 years, compared with 3.5 percent of women who drink up to 13 alcoholic drinks a week.
But independent expert Dr Stephen Narod said advice to avoid alcohol was unlikely to significantly reduce the risk. "If it is true that heredity and alcohol together increase the risk of benign breast disease and breast cancer, I think the maximum number of breast cancers that could be prevented would be less than 1%. Is there any promise for that approach? No." And because alcohol is associated with a reduced risk of heart attacks, it is difficult to draw any conclusions from the study, Narod said.
There are several risk factors for breast cancer, including family history, breast lumps, age and alcohol use. "These risk factors for cancer are scientifically proven," Narod said. "But that doesn't mean we can eliminate breast cancer by eliminating all known risk factors."
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