Alcohol consumption and risk of cancer: a Mendelian randomization analysis of four biobanks and consortium data

作者：Susanna C. Larsson, Amy M. Mason, Héléne T. Cronjé, Emily Bassett, Giovana Horta, Siddhartha Kar, Stephen Burgess · 发表于：BMC Medicine · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1186/s12916-025-04543-8 · 被引用次数：4 · 研究领域：Alcohol Consumption and Health Effects、Genetic Associations and Epidemiology、Glutathione Transferases and Polymorphisms

BACKGROUND: Alcohol consumption has been linked to cancer risk. Evidence is strongest for seven cancer types: breast, colorectum, oesophagus, liver, mouth, pharynx, and larynx. However, evidence supporting a causal effect from Mendelian randomization is inconsistent. METHODS: We perform a comprehensive Mendelian randomization analysis to assess whether genetically-predicted alcohol consumption associates with risk of 20 cancers. Such associations would provide supportive evidence for a causal effect of alcohol consumption on cancer risk. We used 95 genetic variants associated with alcohol consumption at genome-wide significance. Primary analyses were conducted in European ancestry participants from UK Biobank (367,643 individuals), FinnGen (500,348 individuals), All of US (169,312 individuals), and Million Veteran Program (451,206 individuals). We also estimated associations in cancer-specific consortia. RESULTS: No association was observed between genetically-predicted alcohol consumption and overall cancer (odds ratio (OR) per 1 standard deviation increase in alcohol consumption 0.96, p = 0.45). Among the seven highlighted cancer types, we saw a multiply-corrected significant positive estimate for combined head/neck cancer (OR 1.51, p = 0.001), and nominally significant positive estimates for colorectal (OR 1.21, p = 0.035) and oesophageal (OR 1.42 p = 0.033) cancer. For liver cancer, there was a null estimate overall (OR 1.40, p = 0.10), but a nominally significant positiv...