Lifetime total and beverage specific - alcohol intake and prostate cancer risk: a case-control study

The study included 88 men, aged 45 to 85 years with incident, histologically-confirmed prostate cancer and 272 controls. We conducted extensive in-person interviews regarding lifetime alcohol consumption and other epidemiologic data.Prostate cancer risk was not associated with lifetime intake of total and beverage specific ethanol. In addition we found no association with number of drinks per day (average drinks per day over the lifetime) or drinks per drinking day (average drinks per day on drinking days only over the lifetime). However, we observed an inverse association with the total number of drinking years. Men in the lowest tertile of total drinking years had a two-fold prostate cancer risk than men in the highest tertile (OR 2.16, 95% CI 0.98–4.78, p for trend <0.05).Our results suggest that alcohol intake distribution across lifetime may play a more important role in prostate cancer etiology than total lifetime consumption.Prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy and the second leading cause of cancer death among men in the Western countries [1]. Notwithstanding the importance of this malignancy, little is understood about its cause. To date the only well established risk factors are age, family history of disease, race and country of residence [2], while the body of the evidence about the role of alcohol intake is still controversial. Since alcohol consumption is a common lifestyle factor and potentially modifiable, the finding of an association with prostate cancer could have an important impact on public health.Among the population-based case-control studies, those carried out by Heyes et al. [3] and Sharpe et al. [4] found an increased risk of prostate cancer associated with alcohol consumption. Risk increased with increasing frequency of alcohol consumption [3] and among those who drank regularly over a longer period [4]. Sesso et al., in their prospective cohort study, confirmed the finding of a higher risk associated with alcohol c