A study touted to be the largest of its kind to evaluate the effect of red and white wines in increasing breast-cancer risk concludes that the two are equal offenders.

The results of the study, led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle, were published in the March issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

"We were interested in teasing out red wine's effects on breast-cancer risk. There is reason to suspect that red wine might have beneficial effects based on previous studies of heart disease and prostate cancer," says lead author Polly Newcomb, head of the cancer prevention program in the Hutchinson Center's public health sciences division. "The general evidence is that alcohol consumption overall increases breast-cancer risk, but the other studies made us wonder whether red wine might in fact have some positive value."

Instead, Newcomb and colleagues found no compelling reason to choose Chianti over chardonnay.

"We found no difference between red or white wine in relation to breast-cancer risk. Neither appears to have any benefits," Newcomb says. "If a woman drinks, she should do so in moderation—no more than one drink a day. And if a woman chooses red wine, she should do so because she likes the taste, not because she thinks it may reduce her risk of breast cancer."

The researchers found that women who consumed 14 or more drinks per week, regardless of the type (wine, liquor, or beer), faced a 24 percent increase in breast cancer compared with non-drinkers.

For the study, the researchers interviewed more than 6,300 women with breast cancer and close to 7,600 age-matched control subjects about their frequency of alcohol consumption (red wine, white wine, liquor, and beer) and other breast-cancer risk factors, such as age at first pregnancy, family history of breast cancer, and postmenopausal hormone use. The study participants, ages 20 to 69, were from Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. The frequency of alcohol consumption was similar in both groups, and equal proportions of women in both groups reported consuming red and white wine.

The National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, funded the research, which also involved investigators from Group Health Cooperative, Seattle; the University of Wisconsin; H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute; and Dartmouth Medical School.