How that nightly tipple could lead to skin cancer

JUST one alcoholic drink a day could give you skin cancer, scientists have warned.

In alarming news for those of us who like to relax with a glass of wine in the evening, any type of tipple raises the likelihood of developing two non-melanoma forms of the disease. Chemicals released when the body breaks down alcohol are believed to be responsible.

The large-scale study defined a standard drink as 10g of alcohol – roughly equivalent to a small glass of wine or half a pint of beer. Every daily 10g shot increased the risk of one type – cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas – by 11 per cent and the other – basal cell carcinoma – rose by 7 per cent. These are tumours that arise in the outer layers of the skin but in different cell types. Unlike melanomas they are usually easily treatable.

Dermatologist Dr Eunyoung Cho, of Brown University, Rhode Island, said: ‘This is an important finding given there are few ways to prevent skin cancer.

‘Given the high prevalence of skin cancer and alcohol drinking, modifying alcohol behaviour may be a realistic intervention goal that can help substantially reduce the global non-melanoma skin cancer burden.’

Last year the same team found a daily glass of white wine increased the risk of melanoma, the third and deadliest type of the skin cancer, by 13 per cent. This is because ethanol in alcohol can metabolise into acetaldehyde, a compound that damages DNA.

The study, published in the British Journal of Dermatology, pooled data from 13 previous studies, including in the UK, that followed participants for up to 30 years, comparing alcohol use with 95,241 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer.

Skin cancer is the most common form in the UK, with at least 100,000 nonmelanoma cases diagnosed every year.