REFERENCES

The authors of a nested case-control study reported a dose-response increase (below the highest quintile) of breast cancer with decreasing telomere length (1). This concurs with other recent data describing an inverse relationship between telo-mere length and incident cancer and cancer mortality (2). On the other hand, moderate alcohol consumption has been observed to be associated with increased risk of breast cancer in women (3). The exact mechanism is obscure, but alcohol may act as a weak cumulative carcinogen and also promote tumor growth. We have observed a decreased leukocyte telo-mere length to be associatedwith evenmoderate lifetime alco-hol consumption among older men (4). Consequently, could alcohol consumption be a further factor linking breast cancer and telomere length? Alcohol consumption was reported to be quite rare (2.7%) in the total cohort of the ShanghaiWomen’s Health Study (1), but was there any difference between cases and controls, as well as possibly an association between telo-mere length and alcohol consumption