‘Striking’ findings
Reached for comment, Timothy Brennan, MD, MPH, chief of clinical services at the Addiction Institute of Mount Sinai in New York, said it is “striking” that heavy drinking in early adulthood led to an increased risk for alcohol-related cancers, even among people who drank much less in middle age.
“We’ve known for decades that alcohol is not harmless, but this data adds to the growing body of literature regarding the significant dangers of heavy drinking during early adulthood,” said Dr. Brennan, who wasn’t involved in the study.
Dr. Brennan cautioned, however, that the authors studied alcohol-related cancers, and “there are likely many other [cancer] risk factors that were not analyzed in this dataset.”
Nevertheless, this evidence helps counter the “troubling narrative” that “it is somehow normal and safe to drink excessively in young adulthood.”
“It is most certainly not safe,” Dr. Brennan told this news organization . “We see in this study that drinking excessively in young adulthood can raise the risk of cancer much later in life.”
The study had no commercial funding. Dr. Bassett, Dr. Jayasekara, and Dr. Brennan have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.