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Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

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Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#6
> Our study highlights the contribution of even relatively low levels of alcohol to the risk of new cancer cases,

"relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I'm always amazed when filling out health surveys where it considers one alcoholic drink every single day a "low level".

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#7
post #3

740,000 cases out of 7.8 billion people, or less than 1 case per 7,800 people. That’s not all that surprising to me.

From the paper,

> Globally, an estimated 741 300 (95% UI 558 500–951 200), or 4.1% (3.1–5.3), of all new cases of cancer in 2020 were attributable to alcohol consumption. Males accounted for 568 700 (76.7%; 95% UI 422 500–731 100) of total alcohol-attributable cancer cases, and cancers of the oesophagus (189 700 cases [110 900–274 600]), liver (154 700 cases [43 700–281 500]), and breast (98 300 cases [68 200–130 500]) contributed the most cases.

So ~4 out of 100 cancer cases can be attributed to alcohol consumption. I'm not sure if that's a _ton_ or how to contextualize it, but that seems like the more appropriate framing.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#8
post #2

See also: https://www.forbes.com/sites/elvaramirez/2021/06/01/study-no...

Yep. The old meme that “moderate drinking is better than no drinking at all” needs to die: these studies included people who didn’t drink for medical reasons, skewing the average health of the nondrinking cohort down.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#9
Correlation =/= Causation

Since we mostly don't really understand what cancer actually is, it's a bit of a stretch to break down percent supposedly caused by alcohol. I can readily think of other possible reasons for a correlation.

Re: Cancer risks increase with alcohol use, leading to over 740k cases last year

#10
I remember how there was that study about how "alcohol is good for you" because the "mortality vs. alcohol consumption" was a slight bathtub curve at the low end.

They completely forgot that many people who don't drink do so because of other confounding health complications that may increase mortality.

Talk about not controlling for variables, yeesh :|

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