Weekly Bottle of Wine May Be Equivalent to 5-10 Cigarettes for Cancer Risk

The absolute cancer risk associated with drinking one bottle of wine per week, or less than 1 drink per day, may be equivalent to that of smoking 10 cigarettes per week among women and 5 cigarettes per week among men, new findings suggest.

The findings help clarify the association between alcohol use and absolute lifetime cancer risk, the authors of the study wrote. They noted that, although knowledge regarding the number of cancers attributable to cigarette smoking is robust, the same association for alcohol use is not well-understood.

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With this in mind, the researchers aimed to determine the “cigarette-equivalent of population cancer harm” for moderate alcohol use. In their study, the researchers first estimated lifetime cancer risk among alcohol-abstaining non-smokers by subtracting alcohol and tobacco attributable fractions from lifetime general population risks.

Subsequently, they multiplied their findings by the relative risk of consuming 1 bottle of wine (or 10 units of alcohol) or smoking 10 cigarettes per week, along with increasing levels of alcohol intake.

Findings indicated that, among non-smokers, consuming 1 bottle of wine per week was associated with 1.0% and 1.4% increases in absolute lifetime cancer risk among men and women, respectively, or the equivalent of 5 weekly cigarettes among men and 10 weekly cigarettes among women.

Among women, alcohol-related cancers were primarily breast cancers, the researchers noted.

—Christina Vogt

Reference:

Hydes TJ, Burton R, Inskip H, Bellis MA, Sheron N. A comparison of gender-linked population cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco: how many cigarettes are there in a bottle of wine? BMC Public Health. 2019;19:316.