Alcohol and Breast Cancer

How alcohol affects the body and increases disease susceptibility

As previously discussed, even though the DNA you inherit from your parents is generally not modifiable, biological changes within cells over time can affect how the body reads and processes your genetic information. Sister Study investigators are very interested in learning about what environmental and lifestyle factors might affect DNA methylation, a type of genetic alteration that serves as an indicator of which genes are turned “on” or “off”. In a recent study, we identified many such markers that may be associated with high alcohol consumption, which is a known risk factor for breast cancer and other diseases. These results may help explain how alcohol affects the body and increases disease susceptibility.

Read more about it here:
Alcohol and DNA Methylation: An Epigenome-Wide Association Study in Blood and Normal Breast Tissue.