Wine drinkers can lower their risk of developing cancer by switching to a lower-alcohol alternative, a British cancer charity has suggested.
The World Cancer Research Fund said suggested that swapping a daily glass of wine for a slightly weaker alternative could be enough to lower the risk of some cancers.
Studies suggest people who drink wine with an alcohol content of 10 percent rather than 14 percent might benefit, the charity said.
The calculation was based on figures in a 2007 report, which looked at the evidence for a link between alcohol consumption and cancer. In theory, scientists calculated that a person drinking one large 250ml glass of wine a night would have a 7 percent lower risk of bowel cancer if they normally drank 10 percent strength wine rather than 14 percent. This is only a modest decrease of risk for an individual, and there is no clear evidence about how long someone would need to substitute weaker wine for their usual tipple in order to reap this benefit. However, the charity said that for every 100 people who did it, one case of bowel cancer would be avoided. While the detailed studies only applied to bowel cancer, it said that there was no reason to believe that the risk of other cancers linked to alcohol, such as throat, oesophageal and breast, would not respond in a similar way. “Making this change might seem quite minor to do, but it could have a real impact on cancer risk,” the BBC quoted Dr Rachel Thompson, science programme manager for WCRF, as saying.
