When Dr. Jian-Wei Gu went to Mississippi to study the cardiovascular system and the process of blood vessel growth, he had no idea he'd make national headlines about his research into the world of cancer.Gu, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says his discovery of the mechanism by which alcohol consumption causes tumor growth was purely accidental.
And extremely significant.
Scientists have known for a hundred years about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. A study from Paris in 1910 showed that 80 percent of patients with cancer of the esophagus or gastric track were alcoholics. More recently, scientists have found correlations between alcohol consumption and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, large bowel, and even the breasts. Yet lab experiments have always failed to show the effects in animals that investigators knew to be true in humans.
It seems past studies used too much alcohol -- in concentrations of 20 percent -- and the animals just wasted away while showing no tumor growth. But when Gu used concentrations of one percent -- about one to two drinks per day in humans -- to study blood vessel growth, he detected stimulated tumor growth in both chick embryos and mice. Thus, his cancer discovery was born.
Gu has further concluded that melanoma cancers in mice grew significantly faster and larger in the mice who consumed the equivalent of one or two alcoholic drinks a day than the mice receiving no alcohol.
Gu's findings, now confirmed by other scientists, are evidence of what many have long suspected -- alcohol, even in moderation, increases cancer risk.
