4.3% of cancers in Nigeria alcohol-induced — WHO

diamond hope

February 22, 2018 2:46 PM

In a WHO report, it has been discovered that a fraction of cancer is as a result of alcohol consumption.

In a new study by WHO in their Status Report on Alcohol, the experts have attributed 4.3% of all cancer seen in Nigeria to alcohol consumption.

It reveals that there has been a significant steep rise in alcohol consumption in Nigeria over the past 15 years, with the increase in wine consumption, a slight increase in beer consumption, while spirit consumption has remained the same. These could have contributed to the rising incidence of colorectal cancer in this population.

The study, which evaluated the incidence of cancers associated with alcohol consumption, said 4.9% of all cancers in men and 3.9% of all cancers in women was due to alcohol consumption. The most common cancers attributable to alcohol consumption were cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx in men and cancer of the breast in women.

This first country-specific estimates of cancers attributable to alcohol consumption published online in the 2017 August edition of the journal, Front Oncology also reported 10.3% of alcohol-associated cancer cases in Nigeria.

For the study, the experts calculated the numbers of cancer cases attributable to alcohol consumption in each s3x based on cancer data from two population-based cancer registries (PBCRs) in Nigeria.

Between 2012 and 2014 study period, the PBCRs reported 4,336 cancer cases of which 1,627 occurred in males, and 2,709 occurred in females. Of these, they found a total of 1,808 cancer cases that were associated with alcohol intake, with 339 in males and 1,469 in females.

Breast cancer was the commonest alcohol-associated cancer reported during the study period, representing 28.1% of all new cancers reported by the registries within the period. But, there was no breast cancer case attributable to alcohol consumption in males.

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