My fellow blogger Jacki recently posted about the effect of alcohol and breast cancer risk in her post titled Thought for the Day: Bingeing and breast cancer.
But why does alcohol consumption stimulate the growth of breast cancer cells?
A study in mice shows that alcohol consumption stimulated the growth and progression of breast cancer by the development of new blood vessels - a process called angiogenesis.
The article stated that "It does this by boosting expression of a factor known as vascular endothelial growth factor or VEGF". Dr. Jian-Wei Gu and colleagues from the University of Mississippi Medical Center examined the effects of tumor growth in mice.
For 4 weeks, 6-week old female mice consumed regular drinking water or water containing 1 percent alcohol, which is equivalent to about 2 to 4 drinks in humans. In week 2, the animals were inoculated with mouse breast cancer cells.
"We found after about 4 weeks that breast tumor size almost doubled in mice that drank alcohol compared to control mice given plain water," Gu noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health. Moderate alcohol intake also caused a noteworthy increase in tumor blood vessels compared with no alcohol intake.
"VEGF can promote the formation of new blood vessels," Gu said. "This suggests that alcohol can induce tumor angiogenesis."
