Drinking and your DNA

There's a good deal of research that supports a link between chronic alcohol consumption and elevated risk of cancers (including those of the respiratory tract, digestive tract, liver, colon, rectum, and breast.

But what's emerging now is new information about the specific genetic differences that influence a person's risk level. The revolution in "personalized medicine" has been slower to arrive than many expected but we are making progress. This study, reported at the AACR, takes a look at who is most sensitive to the cancer-associated effects of alcohol.

Researchers at Georgetown University and the State University of New York at Buffalo examined DNA samples from subjects in the Western New York Exposure and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study. This was a population-based case-control study of breast cancer in women ages 35 to 79 from western New York.

They found that postmenopausal women with DNA sequence variations in two specific genes have a higher risk for breast cancer if they consume alcohol. These genes produce alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes which are important in the metabolism of alcohol. For these women, the risk increases in proportion to the amount they drink. Those who drank the most doubled their risk of breast cancer.