Women who drink just two glasses of wine a day are 50 per cent more likely to get breast cancer than those who don’t drink at all, a major study has found.
Even those who indulge in only three or four glasses of wine over an entire week – well within the Government’s recommended limits – are putting themselves at risk.
Researchers also warn that women who drink regularly in their 20s and 30s are far more likely to develop the illness in later life, regardless of whether they subsequently cut back.
The Government recommends that women should drink no more than 14 units a week, which is about seven medium glasses of wine or 14 measures of spirits.
But this study found that even half this amount – seven units a week – could raise the risk of breast cancer by 15 per cent.
And women who drank nearly four units daily – two glasses of wine – increased the likelihood by 50 per cent.
Researchers at Harvard University and Brigham And Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, looked at the records of 105,986 women aged 30 to 55 who completed surveys on their current drinking habits and how much they drank when they were younger. Over a period of nearly 30 years they monitored how many of the women developed breast cancer.
Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show that women who drank nearly four units a day were 50 per cent more at risk than teetotallers.