According to the latest research, heavy drinkers have an increased risk of dying from pancreatic cancer. The study has shown that non-smokers who have three or more drinks of hard liquor a day face a 36 percent higher risk of dying from pancreatic cancer, compared with non-drinkers. Smoking is a definite risk for pancreatic cancer. The report is published in the March 14 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Lead researcher Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society said, “Overall, these findings add to the evidence that heavy alcohol intake is an independent risk factor for pancreatic cancer…Furthermore, they underscore the importance of the American Cancer Society guideline for cancer prevention recommending that if you drink alcoholic beverages, limit consumption to no more than one drink per day if you are a woman or two drinks per day if you are a man.”
Presently pancreatic cancer is one of the most dangerous cancers since often by the time symptoms appear the cancer is in an advanced stage and spreading rapidly. To make matters worse, pancreatic cancer is also hard to treat. The overall five-year survival rate from this cancer is less than 5 percent.
According to pancreatic cancer expert Dr. Alberto J. Montero, an assistant professor of medicine at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine, this is something we suspected for a while. He added that survival with pancreatic cancer, “hasn't really budged in the past 30 years. By contrast, breast cancer five-year survival is now around 90 percent, the same thing with colorectal cancer.” Same with the natural history of the disease he said. He added that pancreatic cancer is mostly inoperaable and resistant to chemotherapy. “If you're a smoker, the chances of getting lung cancer are much higher than getting pancreatic cancer. In absolute terms, your risk of developing liver cancer and cirrhosis [from drinking] are going to be higher than pancreatic cancer,” he said.
For the study the team collected data on more than a million men and women who took part in the Cancer Prevention Study II. Over 24 years of follow-up, 6,847 of these people died from pancreatic cancer, the researchers noted. “In this large, prospective study, we were able to examine the association between alcohol intake and pancreatic cancer mortality in never-smokers, and across range of daily intake,” Gapstur said. “This association appeared to be only with liquor intake, and not with beer or wine intake…Reasons for the differences by beverage type are unclear, but might be due to a higher amount of alcohol actually consumed in a single drink of liquor compared to wine or beer,” she noted.
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