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."
Researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have found that some blood pressure medications might help stop the spread of pancreatic cancer. ACE inhibitors and AT1R blockers may inhibit angiogenesis, the development of blood vessels that feed a tumor.
