Women who binge drink face increased breast cancer risk

Boffins are warning that women who go on a drinking spree and guzzle the equivalent of roughly two bottles of wine over a weekend more than double their risk developing breast cancer.

The study, of 17,647 nurses, was conducted by researchers at the Centre for Alcohol Research in Denmark. The study was led by Dr Lina Morch.

The researchers found that women, who downed 22-27 drinks a week as compared with those who drank one to three drinks, faced an increased risk of breast cancer.

Women in the study were aged over 44, and most drank a moderate amount of alcohol, with more than a quarter drinking more than the recommended 14 drinks a week.
The boffins noted that each additional drink consumed increased the risk of breast cancer by 2 percent. But this doubled at weekends, which is the time that women usually let their hair down and go on a binge.

While women who consumed excessive drinks on just one day during the week increased their risk of breast cancer by 55 percent, drinking 22-27 drinks over the course of the week was linked to a 130 percent increased risk.

"What our study suggests is that the total amount of alcohol consumed has a detrimental effect on the risk of breast cancer, but also the drinking pattern seems to have an impact on the risk," the BBC quoted Dr Lina Morch, as saying.

"When more drinks are consumed within a limited time frame the concentration of alcohol in the blood peaks, which we suppose is more harmful than when the same amount of alcohol is consumed over longer time periods," she added.

A drink was classed as a bottle of beer or a glass of wine or spirit, which in Denmark is roughly 12g of alcohol.

One in 10 women in the study were week-day binge drinkers, having more than four drinks a day and 13 percent were weekend binge drinkers, defined as more than 10 drinks between Friday and Sunday.

The findings are reported the European Journal of Public Health.