The next time you down chilled bottles of beer, be careful about the amount you consume, for a new study has revealed that too much of the alcoholic brew may hasten the onset of pancreatic cancer.Researchers at Michigan University have found that beer drinkers are at a greater risk of developing pancreatic cancer compared to those who take hard liquor or wine as the beverage lowers the age of getting the disease.“Beer exerts a stronger influence than hard liquor or wine in lowering the age of onset of pancreatic cancer,” lead researcher Prof Michelle A. Anderson was quoted by the media as saying.Anderson and her colleagues evaluated 453 patients from The Pancreatic Cancer Collaborative Registry, looking at whether the patients drank, and if so, how much and what type of liquor.Heavy drinkers, defined as having more than three daily drinks, presented with pancreatic cancer ten years younger than those who did not drink, the researchers found in their study.Comparing beer, wine and hard liquor, they noted that beer lowered the age of developing pancreatic cancer most.When the researchers compared beer drinkers to non-beer drinkers, the effect was statistically significant; however, when they considered other variables that may affect cancer onset, the effect disappeared.“Heavy alcohol intake may induce chronic inflammatory changes that are also linked with cancer,” Anderson said.However, the researchers found that the combination of chronic smoking plus drinking had as such no stronger effect on pancreatic risk than either of the habits alone.
