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Bad
Mix: Heavy Beer Drinking and a Gene Variant
increase Gastric Cancer Risk
Newswise, April 10, 2011 — Heavy beer
drinkers who have a specific genetic variant
in the cluster of three genes that
metabolize alcohol are at significantly
higher risk of developing non-cardia gastric
cancer, according to research presented at
the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011.
Study results also showed that the same risk
is also elevated (but not as significantly)
for heavy beer drinkers who do not have the
variant, known as rs1230025, and for
non-drinkers who have rs1230025 or rs283411.
“This is a classic gene-environment
interaction,” said Eric Duell, Ph.D., senior
epidemiologist in the Cancer Epidemiology
Research Program at the Catalan Institute of
Oncology in Barcelona, Spain.
“Having both of these risks — heavy beer
consumption and rs1230025 — appears to be
worse in terms of gastric cancer risk than
having just one or neither.”
Gastric cancer is the second leading cause
of cancer death worldwide, but because some
countries, such as the United States, have
much lower rates of gastric cancer than
others, Duell believes this disease has a
stronger environmental component than a
genetic component.
Alcohol use has long been suspected to be a
contributing factor to the development of
gastric cancer but numerous studies have
shown mixed results.
Duell and colleagues conducted a
comprehensive analysis of alcohol
consumption and gastric cancer risk in the
more than 521,000 people aged 35 to 70 years
old who participated in the European
Prospective Investigation into Cancer and
Nutrition (EPIC) study from 1992 through
1998.
The researchers evaluated the type of
alcohol consumed (i.e. wine, beer or liquor)
and the location and grade of cancer. Total
consumption of 60 grams of pure
ethanol/alcohol from all beverage types
combined carried a 65 percent increased
risk. (One 12 ounce beer contains about 13
grams of pure alcohol/ethanol.)
However, this association was confined to
beer. Results showed that drinking 30 grams
of pure ethanol/alcohol or more a day from
beer was linked to a 75 percent increased
risk of developing gastric cancer. Wine and
liquor was not associated with gastric
cancer risk, Duell said.
In a further analysis, using the EurGast
study nested within EPIC (which included 365
gastric cancer cases and 1,284 controls),
the researchers analyzed the effects of
known single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)
in the gene cluster (ADH1) that produces an
enzyme that breaks down alcohol. Two
variants in the ADH1 locus were
statistically significantly associated with
gastric cancer risk; only one variant,
rs1230025, interacted with beer consumption
to increase risk.
The exact mechanism for how alcohol may
cause gastric cancer is not known. However,
Duell said there are compelling hypotheses
involving the metabolite of alcohol
(acetaldehyde, a toxic and carcinogenic
compound), and nitrosamines such as N-nitrosodemethylamine
(a known animal carcinogen that has been
found in beer).
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