Teenage girls up breast cancer risk with every alcoholic drink

Boston, MA, United States (AHN) – Among teen girls with a family history of breast cancer, there is a significant association between the amount of alcohol consumed and the risk of getting benign breast disease, which is a known breast cancer risk factor.

Benign breast disease is described by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers as a large class of breast ailments that can cause breast lumps or breast pain.

The study participants, who were aged 9 to 15 years old in the beginning of the study, completed annual questionnaires from 1996 to 2001, and then again in 2003, 2005 and 2007. In the final two surveys, the participants – who were between the ages of 18 to 27 – reported whether they had ever been diagnose with benign breast disease. A total of 67 reported receiving the diagnosis, while 6,741 reported they had not.

The women’s mothers also reported their own cases of benign breast disease and breast cancer, and also cases among other family members.

Women whose mothers or aunts had breast cancer were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with benign breast disease compared to women with no family history. Those with mothers who had benign breast disease also saw their own risk of getting the disease nearly double.

But what the researchers are calling the most important, adolescent girls with mothers, aunts or grandmothers with breast cancer were more likely to develop breast disease with the more alcohol they drank. The same risk was seen among girls whose mothers had benign breast disease.

A full report on the study appears online in the American Cancer Society’s journal Cancer.

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