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Alcohol causes cancer: report

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Alcohol consumption caused more than 700,000 new cancer
cases and around 366,000 cancer deaths in 2012, mainly in
rich countries, according to data reported Wednesday to the
World Cancer Congress in Paris.

Comparing the cancer risk of people who drink, to that of
people who do not, researchers calculated that alcohol was
responsible for an estimated five percent of all new cancer
cases, and 4.5 percent of deaths per year.

“A large part of the population is unaware that cancer can be
caused by alcohol,” study co-author Kevin Shield of the
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), told AFP of the preliminary report, not yet published.

Alcohol was most strongly linked to new breast cancer
diagnoses — more than one in four of all alcohol-attributable
cancer cases, the researchers found, followed by colorectal
cancer at 23 percent.

For breast cancer, particularly, it was clear that “the risk
increases with the dose” of alcohol, said Shield.

Measuring alcohol’s contribution to cancer deaths, the
researchers found it was most strongly linked to oesophagus
cancer fatalities, followed by colorectal cancer.

The IARC, the cancer agency of the World Health
Organization (WHO), lists alcohol as a “group 1 carcinogen”,
which means it is considered cancer-causing, though Shield
said the mechanism was “not exactly known”.

Globally, the burden was highest in north America, Australia
and Europe, particularly eastern Europe, but this was slowly
changing as people in developing nations start imbibing
more, the researchers said.

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