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Tracy Hampton, PhD

JAMA. 2005;294:1481.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

A study conducted by scientists from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provides new information on the known link between drinking alcoholic beverages and increased risk of upper gastrointestinal tract cancer and other types of cancer (Theruvathu et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 2005;33:3513-3520).

Researchers studying a potential link between alcohol and cancer have focused on acetaldehyde, a suspected carcinogen that is the first metabolite formed as the body breaks down alcohol. The new report indicates that polyamines, natural compounds involved in cell growth, interact with acetaldehyde and trigger reactions that damage DNA, a scenario that can lead to the development of cancer.

The investigators found that polyamines caused the conversion of acetaldehyde into crotonaldehyde, an environmental pollutant known to cause cancer in animals. This chemical in turn altered DNA, generating an abnormal DNA base called a . . . [Full Text of this Article]