A systematic review of alcohol interventions for people living with and beyond cancer
Year: 2017
Type: report
Study design: Systematic Review
Abstract: There is a wealth of evidence pointing to the link between drinking alcohol and the development of cancer. However, there is also evidence suggesting that people diagnosed with cancer continue to live unhealthy lifestyles by drinking more than the recommended intake for alcohol. This has the potential to increase the risk of cancer recurrence, or expedite the development of new cancers. Approximately one in two people diagnosed with cancer will now survive for more than five years. This has led to a growing research interest in delivering healthy lifestyle interventions for cancer patients to reduce their risk of future cancers. However, previous research has been primarily focused around developing interventions for improving diet and physical activity, with limited research focussing specifically on alcohol use. This study describes a systematic review of the literature outlining the impact of lifestyle interventions on alcohol use following a diagnosis of cancer. Our search strategy consisted of online searches of electronic databases which catalogue the results of published peer-reviewed research, and reports by health organisations, local authorities, and charities. In order to be eligible, an article had to describe a lifestyle, or medical intervention, and report if there were any changes to alcohol use following the intervention. The searches identified 19,579 potentially relevant articles. Initially the title and abstract of each article was screened to ascertain whether they should be included in the review. This reduced the number of potentially relevant articles to 94. Following this, the full texts of each of the 94 articles was obtained and assessed before a final decision was made. This resulted in seven articles being eligible for inclusion in this systematic review. The results of this review found that no studies specifically focussed on alcohol use, instead they tended to focus on healthy eating and physical activity interventions. Only one article reported a reduction in alcohol intake with participants who received the intervention compared to those who did not. A number of articles described studies where the authors found that alcohol use reduced over time for all participants, whether they received the intervention or not. Furthermore, the vast majority of participants across the studies were white women who had received a diagnosis of breast cancer. This suggests that the results of these studies may lack generalisability across all cancer patients. The mixed impact on alcohol intake, as well as the lack of diversity of included participants suggests that further research is needed to determine whether or not interventions can have an impact on alcohol intake following a cancer diagnosis
Source: TeesRep (Teesside University)
Institution: Centre for Social Innovation
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3110054241