More Evidence about Harms of Alcohol
The work of Jo L. Freudenheim, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health, is contributing to growing evidence about the connections between alcohol and adverse health outcomes.
Freudenheim served on the 15-member Committee on the Review of Evidence on Alcohol and Health, which wrote a report at the request of Congress outlining linkages between moderate alcohol consumption and several health outcomes. The report, released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, came just weeks before U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a new advisory on the direct link between drinking alcohol and increased cancer risk.
In addition to the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and certain types of cancer, the report also examined linkages to seven other health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, weight changes, all-cause mortality, and neurocognitive health.
The report will help inform the next edition of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which was last updated in 2020. The next update of the guidelines, which are revised every 5 years, is expected to be released in the next few months.
Freudenheim also co-authored a paper in the journal Breast Cancer Research that examined the effects of quitting drinking compared to continuing drinking alcohol on breast cancer risk. Several different subtypes of breast cancer exist, Freudenheim explains, and evidence supports differences in what causes these subtypes.
“Alcohol is often generally found to be more associated with ‘ER positive’ than ‘ER negative’ breast cancer,” she says.
The study suggests that stopping alcohol use compared to continuing to drink is associated with lower risk of ER positive breast cancer and higher risk of ER negative breast cancer. One of the strengths of the meta-analysis conducted by the researchers is the assessment of breast cancer risk for alcohol cessation compared to that for continuing consumption rather than for abstention from drinking.
In late 2023, Freudenheim was a co-author on a report in the New England Journal of Medicine in which the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) issued a summary review of alcohol reduction or cessation and cancer risk.
Freudenheim was part of a working group of 15 scientists from eight countries that reviewed published studies and evaluated the strength of epidemiologic evidence on the potential for alcohol reduction or cessation to reduce alcohol-related cancer risk.
“We found that for some kinds of cancer there’s not enough research yet, but for oral and esophageal cancer, there is strong research that if you cut down or stop drinking it will reduce your risk,” Freudenheim says.