Study: Heavy drinking may increase prostate cancer risk

A new study, published in Monday's online edition of the journal Cancer, links heavy drinking to the most dangerous kind of prostate cancer.

What's more, researchers found that a drug which protects men against the disease can't undo the damage of high alcohol consumption.

Thomas Mitchell was one of more than 2,000 men who took part in a study to find out if a daily dose of finasteride - brand name Propecia, a hair loss drug - would reduce the risk of getting prostate cancer. It did.

"And in my opinion that's really a plus," said Mitchell. "Prostate cancer scares me."

"Before this, we didn't have anything," said Dr. Jay Bishoff, urologist. "This is the first drug that has shown to decrease your chance of getting prostate cancer."

But now researchers, including Fred Hutchinson epidemiologist Dr. Alan Kristal, have discovered that the drug doesn't work for one group of men: heavy drinkers. In fact, their risk of aggressive prostate cancer went up significantly.

"Men who, on average, drink four drinks or more a day had a high risk of high-grade prostate cancer, nearly doubled the risk of people who did not drink that much," said Kristal.

The number of drinks seems to be four or more a day. Amounts below that didn't have an effect. Although beer was the beverage of choice for most of the heavy drinkers in the study, Kristal says the caution likely applies to all alcohol.

"The take home message is really simple. Drinking in moderation seems to be fine, at least for your prostate and it's certainly fine for your heart, but drinking that much - four rinks a day or more - is problematic," said Kristal.

Previous research linked heavy drinking to esophageal and liver cancers, but because prostate cancer is much more common. Kristal says this is important information for men to know.