East Asian people with low alcohol tolerance have an increased chance of developing a hard-to-cure type of stomach cancer if they drink, according to a new genome study by Japanese researchers.
The study, published in Nature Genetics on Tuesday, is based on the largest ever genomic analysis of cells collected from stomach cancer patients — with these taken from a total of 1,457 patients in Japan, the U.S., China, South Korea and Singapore — researchers at the National Cancer Center Research Institute said.
The researchers, led by the institute's Tatsuhiro Shibata, said that certain genomic abnormalities specifically related to alcohol consumption are linked to the onset of “diffuse-type” stomach cancer, in which cancer affects much of the stomach rather than one area of it.
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