Hydes TJ, et al. - In men and women, researchers assessed the increase in absolute risk of developing cancer attributed to moderate levels of alcohol drinking. They compared this to the increase in absolute risk of developing cancer secondary to smoking. In alcohol-abstaining non-smokers, they determined the lifetime cancer risk by subtracting alcohol and tobacco attributable fractions from lifetime general population risks of developing alcohol- and smoking-related cancers. Multiplication of this by the relative risk of drinking ten units of alcohol or smoking ten cigarettes per week, and increasing levels of consumption, was done. For non-smokers of 1.0% (men) and 1.4% (women), an increased absolute lifetime cancer risk was reported in relation to one bottle of wine per week. They found that for one bottle of wine per week, the overall absolute increase in cancer risk was equivalent to that of five (men) or ten cigarettes per week (women). Sex disparities due to levels of moderate drinking resulted in a 0.8% absolute risk of breast cancer in female non-smokers.