Alcohol linked to an increased risk of skin cancer

Conclusion These findings should be interpreted with care before concluding that an alcoholic drink per day increases your risk of skin cancer. There are several important cautions: These are only observational studies. It wouldn't be possible to randomise people to different alcohol intake and follow them to look at cancer development. And with observational studies, many other health, sociodemographic and lifestyle factors may be influencing the link between alcohol intake and cancer development. The studies differed considerably in terms of the influencing factors they took account of, with some adjusting for various confounders, some adjusting for only age and gender, and some taking none into account. Therefore we cannot be sure that alcohol is having a direct and independent effect on cancer risk. The individual studies differed in the alcohol intake they compared. For example, some compared all drinkers with non-drinkers, others compared intake of more or less than one glass a week, and others compared "above average" intake with none. This makes it very difficult when pooling the studies to be sure what intakes you are comparing – especially given the additional limitation that alcohol intake will have been self-reported, so may be inaccurate. The relative risk increases are very small at only 7% and 11%. We don't know from this paper what the absolute risk of these cancers was – in other words, what proportion of all people actually developed ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Cancer Source Type: news