title: Alcohol consumption in relation to breast cancer risk in a cohort of United States women 25-42 years of age.
abstract: We evaluated current and past alcohol consumption prospectively in relation to breast cancer risk among 116,671 women ages 25-42 years old at enrollment in 1989. During 6 years of follow-up, 445 cases of invasive breast cancer were identified. For alcohol consumption in the previous year, the multivariate relative risk associated with more than 20 g/day (approximately 10 drinks/week) was 1.23 (95% confidence interval, 0.68-2.21); the P for trend was 0.85. For average lifetime alcohol consumption, the multivariate relative risk associated with consumption of 10 or more drinks/week was 1.20 (95% confidence interval, 0.69-2.11); the P for trend was 0.18. We examined drinking in several time periods of life; only drinking at ages 23-30 was significantly positively associated with risk. Although this may represent a chance finding, it merits further study. Because drinking levels in this population were low, we had limited information on heavier drinking. Our results suggest that there is unlikely to be a large effect of moderate alcohol consumption on breast cancer risk among young women, although a modest effect cannot be excluded. The association between alcohol consumption and breast cancer is unlikely to be substantially stronger among premenopausal women than among postmenopausal women.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Garland
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Hunter
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Colditz
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Spiegelman
authors.forename: J E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Manson
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Stampfer
authors.forename: W C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Willett
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D015897:Comorbidity; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011446:Prospective Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D012307:Risk Factors; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology