Alcohol consumption and breast cancer: a cross-national correlation study

The authors examined the cross-national correlation of alcohol consumption (based on food availability data) and breast cancer. Weighted correlation coefficients for alcohol and breast cancer were 0.31 for mortality and 0.65 for incidence; the corresponding unweighted coefficients were 0.50 and 0.45. Correlation coefficients for fat consumption and breast cancer ranged from 0.69-0.89. After adjustment for fat consumption in multiple regression models, the positive alcohol-breast cancer association disappeared, while the fat-breast cancer correlation remained positive and strong. These findings do not support the positive alcohol-breast cancer association that has been suggested by analytical epidemiological studies. The multivariate results, however, should be interpreted with caution due to the potential variation in the extent to which national alcohol data reflect consumption among females.