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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Med Paediatr Oncol 2020; 41(04): 473-475
DOI: 10.4103/ijmpo.ijmpo_91_20
Editorial Commentary

Alcohol and Cancer: Waiting for the Storm to Pass or Dancing in the Rains!

Richa Vaish
1   Department of Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Centre, Tata Memorial Hospital, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
,
Jyoti Bajpai
2   Department of Medical Oncology, Tata Memorial Centre, Tata Memorial Hospital, Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
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For an oncologist, cancer is about focusing on the fight and not the fright; however, for the patient and patient's family, it is frightening most of the times! There are many risk factors associated with cancer, including modifiable and nonmodifiable. Chronic alcohol abuse is one of the modifiable risk factors, inundated with health problems including cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer monographs classify alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogenic agent which means that alcohol is carcinogenic to humans.[1] The evidence is primarily furnished by the epidemiological studies including case–control and cohort studies which report the estimate of effect (relative risk). There is a paucity of randomized controlled trials assessing both the carcinogenicity and causal association of alcohol and cancers. The Continuous Update Project World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research reinforces that consumption of alcohol is associated with the increased risk of cancer and also provides causal association.[2],[3] There is an increased incidence for cancers of 7 subsites secondary to alcohol consumption. These are lip and oral cavity, oropharynx and hypopharynx, esophagus, colorectal, liver, larynx, and breast.[4] The benefit of moderate drinking of alcohol is controversial with upsurgence of recent data demonstrating the contrary.[5],[6]

Tobacco and alcohol are both preventable causes of cancers. The effect of simultaneous consumption of the two is not additive but synergistic. While the efforts are being made to curb the tobacco consumption at various levels, the measures are relatively less proactive when it comes to alcohol. There can be multiple reasons to it including lesser alcohol consumption in South East Asia compared to Western world, industry-driven motives, and, to an extent, lack of awareness.



Publication History

Received: 09 March 2020

Accepted: 01 May 2020

Article published online:
17 May 2021

© 2020. Indian Society of Medical and Paediatric Oncology. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.)

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