'Alcohol drinking linked to over 62K new cancer cases in India last year'

New Delhi: Alcohol consumption was associated with 62,100 or five per cent of newly diagnosed cancer cases last year in India, according to a study published in The Lancet Oncology journal which shows alcohol use is on the rise in the country.

Globally, the researchers found that more than 740,000 or four per cent of new cancer cases in 2020 may be attributed to alcohol drinking.

The study estimates that men accounted for 77 per cent (568,700 cases) of alcohol-associated cancer cases, compared with women, who accounted for 23 per cent of cases (172,600).

Cancers of the oesophagus, liver, and breast accounted for the largest number of cases.

Based on data from previous years, it shows that in 2020, there were more than 6.3 million cases of mouth, pharynx, voice box (larynx), oesophageal, colon, rectum, liver, and breast cancer.

These cancers have well-established causal links to alcohol consumption, and the estimates of the direct associations with alcohol in the new study are the first of their kind for 2020.

"Trends suggest that although there is a decrease in alcohol consumption per person in many European countries, alcohol use is on the rise in Asian countries such as China and India, and in sub-Saharan Africa," said Harriet Rumgay of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), France.

"In addition, there is evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has increased rates of drinking in some countries," Rumgay said.

The researchers call for greater public awareness of the link between alcohol and cancers and increased government interventions to reduce its consumption in worst-affected regions.

The study highlights the contribution of even relatively low levels of drinking to rates of cancer, which is concerning, but also suggests that small changes to public drinking behaviour could positively impact future cancer rates.

Alcohol consumption has been shown to cause DNA damage through increased production of harmful chemicals in the body, and affect hormone production, which can contribute to cancer development, according to the researchers.

Alcohol can also worsen the cancer-causing effects of other substances, such as tobacco, they said.

In the new study, researchers established levels of alcohol intake per person per country for 2010, to allow for the time it takes for alcohol intake to affect possible cancer development.

They then combined them with new cancer cases in 2020 to estimate the number of alcohol-associated cancers in each country.