Drinking just one small glass of wine a day increases a woman's risk of developing a range of cancers, according to an Oxford University study.
Researchers found women who had one alcoholic drink a day were 6% more likely to develop cancer by age 75 than those who did not drink at all.
The study, which examined one million women aged 50 and over, suggests that 7,000 cases of cancer per year are caused by drinking a 125ml glass of wine a day.
Women who consume two glasses of wine a day double their risk of contracting cancer, the study found.
'We know that too much alcohol increases the risk of a number of cancers,' Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, told The Daily Telegraph.
'This latest study shows that even relatively low levels of drinking increase a woman's risk of developing cancer.'
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A 6% increase in risk? As much as that? My goodness. On the other hand, studies in Denmark and
France involving more than 50,000 men and women over a long time period reported that heart disease and death rates were much lower among wine drinkers than among the general population.
A follow-up study in California with more than twice as many people - well over 100,000--confirmed the findings, even further emphasizing the beneficial role of wine. Is your glass of wine half-full or half-empty?
Do you look both ways before crossing the street?
Seriously, to state that '7,000 cases of cancer per year are caused by drinking a 125ml glass of wine a day' is statistical nonsense, a jump from science to voodoo. Millions of cases of cancer per year are caused by a wide variety of factors interacting with each other. Lousy interpretation of research may be one of them.
Brian St. Pierre
I really think there is a campaign against drinking wine in France and everywhere in the world by people who don't appreciate drinking wine.
Why do people want to destroy the image of our culture, our passion, our tradition our work? We really have to stop this international campaign and stop relaying the kind of information that for me isn't true at all
So please everybody stand up against those people and hope that will not affect our world of great pleasure.
Cheers to all of you who appreciate this way of life, and please continue to spread our passion to the world.
Eric, Shanghai
Epidemiologic studies are like this, they let one take odd conclusions sometimes. They also lead to a lot of questions, like what about men? Did they have the same overweight levels, or did they smoke the same amount? Maybe the wine drinking group smoked more than the abstainers (which is totally expected, as are many other daily diet behaviors that it would be very useful to point out) and actually drinking wine is saving a lot of them from getting cancer.
They were recording for cancer, but what were other illnesses found in both groups? Any findings about heart diseases?
To me, looking for what you want to see in two groups with debatably the same behavior, can be very unfair.
Sergio Cuadra, winemaker - Caliterra, Chile
As usual reports like this need to be seen in perspective to avoid them becoming scare stories. The first perspective is the additional risk, which, if my rudimentary arithmetic is correct, goes from 1 in 8.5 (no wine consumption) to 1 in 8 at the single glass per day level, and to 1 in 7.7 at the two glass level. And we should not forget that this is at age 72: it needs to be seen in the context of the 100% risk of succumbing to a fatal disease called life expectancy which clicks in for most people around ten years later. The final perspective is the counter-effect of the health benefits of drinking wine in moderation. While we cannot expect Cancer Research UK to comment on this last point, in its absence what the research does not demonstrate is that we should stop drinking wine.
Hugo Rose, Wine Market Consultant
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A 6% increase in risk? As much as that? My goodness. On the other hand, studies in Denmark and
