Posted on April 22, 2010

While binge drinking appears to be a preferred pastime by too many youths, new research findings suggest that the activity in teenage girls increases the risk of developing breast cancer.

A recent Telegraph report examined new findings that suggest girls and young women who drink alcohol most days are five times more likely to develop benign breast disease, which can in turn increase their risk of developing breast cancer.

Throughout the UK, binge drinking among adolescent girls has dramatically increased. In some parts of the country, girls between 11 and 15 are consuming up to a bottle and a half of wine a week.

According to research from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis and Harvard University, girls who drank on six or seven days a week were more than five times more likely to experience the benign disease, which causes non-cancerous lumps, cysts or a skin or nipple problem.

Dr. Graham Colditz said: "Our study clearly showed that the risk of benign breast disease increased with the amount of alcohol consumed in this age group. The study is an indication that alcohol should be limited in adolescence and early adult years and further focuses our attention on these years as key to preventing breast cancer later in life."

In addition to drinking more often, those participants diagnosed with benign breast disease had more episodes of binge drinking. Other research showed that girls who are thinner than average at age seven were also more likely to develop breast cancer after they went through menopause. Such findings, however, are difficult to conclude without a longitudinal study that follows individuals over a long period of time.