A new study conducted by researchers at Michigan University revealed that intake of beer in large quantities can actually speed up the risk of pancreatic cancer.

The majority of pancreatic cancer cases usually detected when it reaches the later stages as early detection is often difficult.

Lead researcher Prof Michelle A. Anderson and his team evaluated 453 patients from the Pancreatic Cancer Collaborative Registry, a multi-center, international patient registry.
The researchers noted down their smoking and drinking habits of the patients, together with the type of liquor and the quantity they consumed.

The study results discovered that heavy drinkers were more likely of having pancreatic cancer 10 years earlier as compared to non-drinkers.

The team also discovered that beer reduced the age of developing pancreatic cancer the most.

Moreover consuming beer accelerated the risk as compared to other liquor.

On the other hand, the people who smoked more were likely to have cancer 7 years before as compared to those who did not smoke.

Anderson stated, “Heavy alcohol intake may induce chronic inflammatory changes that are also linked with cancer.”

The researches also found that when both habits (drinking and smoking) combined together showed no stronger effect on pancreatic risk than either of the habits alone.

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Every year nearly 30,000 individuals in the U.S. are diagnosed with this condition. The average patient lives just 3 months after diagnosis and only 10 to 15% of patients are alive a year later and fewer than 1 percent of the patients survive five years.