Marron, Manuela Boffetta, Paolo Moller, Henrik Ahrens, Wolfgang Pohlabeln, Hermann Benhamou, Simone Bouchardy, Christine Lagiou, Pagona Lagiou, Areti Slamova, Alena Schejbalova, Miriam Merletti, Franco Richiardi, Lorenzo Kjaerheim, Kristina Agudo, Antonio Castellsague, Xavier Macfarlane, Tatiana Victorovna Macfarlane, Gary John Talamini, Renato Barzan, Luigi Canova, Cristina Simonato, Lorenzo Biggs, Anne-Marie Thomson, Peter Conway, David Ian McKinney, Patricia Ann Znaor, Ariana Healy, Claire Marie McCartan, Bernard Eugene Brennan, Paul Hashibe, Mia eng Multicenter Study Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Netherlands 2012/06/14 06:00 Eur J Epidemiol. 2012 Jul;27(7):499-517. doi: 10.1007/s10654-012-9699-1. Epub 2012 Jun 13. ; International audience ; The general relationship between cancers of the upper aerodigestive tract (UADT) and alcohol drinking is established. Nevertheless, it is uncertain whether different types of alcoholic beverages (wine, beer and liquor) carry different UADT cancer risks. Our study included 2,001 UADT cancer cases and 2,125 controls from 14 centres in 10 European countries. All cases were histologically or cytologically confirmed squamous cell carcinomas. Controls were frequency matched by sex, age and centre. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios (OR) and 95 % confidence intervals (95 %CI) adjusted for age, sex, centre, education level, vegetable and fruit intake, tobacco smoking and alcohol drinking, where appropriate. Risk of beverage-specific alcohol consumption were calculated among 'pure drinker' who consumed one beverage type exclusively, among 'predominant drinkers' who consumed one beverage type to more than 66 % and among 'mixed drinkers' who consumed more than one beverage type to similar proportions. Compared to never drinkers and adjusted for cumulative alcohol consumption, the OR and 95 %CI for wine, beer and liquor drinking, respectively, were 1.24 (0.86, 1.78), 1.54 (1.05, 2.27) and 0.94 (0.53, 1.64) among 'pure drinkers' (p value for heterogeneity across beverage types = 0.306), 1.05 (0.76,1.47), 1.25 (0.87,1.79) and 1.43 (0.95, 2.16) among 'predominant drinkers' (p value = 0.456), and 1.09 (0.79, 1.50), 1.20 (0.88, 1.63) and 1.12 (0.82, 1.53) among 'mixed drinkers' (p value = 0.889). Risk of UADT cancer increased with increasing consumption of all three alcohol beverage types. Our findings underscore the strong and comparable carcinogenic effect of ethanol in wine, beer and liquor on organs of the UADT.