Washington, July 13 : Researchers at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) say that heavy, daily drinking increases the risk of high-grade prostate cancer.

Dr. Zhihong Gong, who led the study at the university, also says that heavy drinking makes the drug finastride ineffective in reducing prostate cancer risk.

The UCSF team came to this conclusion after examining the associations of total alcohol, type of alcoholic beverage, and drinking pattern with risks of total, low- and high-grade prostate cancer.

For their study, the researchers used data from more than 10,000 men participating in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT).

They found that participants who reported heavy alcohol consumption (=50 g alcohol/day) and regular heavy drinking (=4 drinks/day on =5 days per week) were twice as likely or more to be diagnosed with high-grade prostate cancer.

According to the researchers, less heavy drinking was not associated with risk.

The team also compared drinking patterns with treatment outcome among men enrolled on the placebo-controlled trial of finasteride, and found that the drug's ability to lower prostate cancer risk was blocked in men drinking less than 50g alcohol per day.

A research article describing the study has been published in the online edition of the journal CANCER. (ANI)