CARBC study finds alcohol-prostate cancer link

A new collaborative study done by researchers at the Centre for Addictions Research of BC (CARBC) at the University of Victoria and Australia’s National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) at Curtin University provides new evidence of a significant relationship between alcohol consumption and the risk of prostate cancer. The article appears in BMC Cancer, a peer-reviewed online journal.

Notably, the study is the first systematic review and meta-analysis on the topic to control for the methodological error of "abstainer bias" (combining former drinkers, who drank varying amounts before quitting, with lifetime abstainers).

We found a dose-response relationship between amount of alcohol consumed and risk of prostate cancer; that is, generally speaking, the more you drink, the greater your risk.  Even low volume drinking was associated with an elevated risk of prostate cancer - eight to 23 percent higher than lifetime abstainers.

See the full media release on the main UVic website 

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