4.3% OF CANCERS IN NIGERIA ARE ALCOHOL INDUCED
In world health organisation WHO recent study on alcohol consumption in Nigeria it reveals that there has been a significant steep rise in alcohol consumption in Nigeria over the past 15 years, with an 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. In total, the expert have attributed 4.3% of all cancers seen in Nigeria to alcohol consumption.
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.
Between 2012 and 2014 study period, the population-based cancer registries, 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.