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Risk of Basal Cell Carcinoma in Relation to Alcohol Intake and Smoking

Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, Radiation Epidemiology Branch, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland

We prospectively investigated whether alcohol intake and smoking affect the risk of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) in subjects from the United States Radiological Technologists (USRT) cohort study. We evaluated 68,371 radiological technologists certified during 1926–1982 who were free of cancer at the time they answered a first questionnaire (1983–1989) and who completed a second questionnaire (1994–1998). The first questionnaire provided baseline information on numerous risk factors, including smoking and alcohol intake, and the second provided self-reported cancer diagnoses. During 698,190 person-years of follow-up, we identified 1,360 cases of BCC: 1,036 in women and 324 in men. Cox proportional hazards regression indicated that the trend in BCC was significantly associated with increased alcohol intake (P for trend = 0.001). Compared with those who reported no alcohol consumption, those who drank <1–2, 3–6, 7–14, and >14 drinks/week had multivariate risks of 1.1 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.9–1.3], 1.3 (95% CI, 1.1–1.5), 1.4 (95% CI, 1.2–1.7), and 1.0 (95% CI, 0.7–1.6), respectively. We found no clear association between smoking and BCC. This is the second large prospective study to report a significant but nonmonotonic trend in increased risk associated with alcohol consumption.

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