Recent studies suggest that the increased risk of
breast cancer associated with alcohol consumption may be reduced by adequate
folate intake. We examined this question among 66,561 postmenopausal women in the American Cancer Society
Cancer Prevention Study II Nutrition Cohort. A total of 1,303 incident cases had accrued during the first 5 years of follow-up. Cox proportional hazards models and stratified analysis were used to examine the relationship between alcohol, dietary and total
folate intake, multivitamin use, dietary
methionine, and
breast cancer. We observed an increasing risk of
breast cancer with increasing alcohol consumption (P for trend = 0.01). In the highest category of consumption (15 or more grams of
ethanol/day), the risk of
breast cancer was 1.26 (95% confidence interval, 1.04-1.53) compared with nonusers. We observed this association with higher alcohol consumption for in situ, localized, and regional disease. We found no association between risk of
breast cancer and dietary
folate, total
folate, multivitamin use, or
methionine intake. Furthermore, we found no evidence of an interaction between levels of dietary
folate (P for interaction = 0.10) or total
folate (P for interaction = 0.61) and alcohol. Nor did we find evidence of an interaction between alcohol consumption and recent or long-term multivitamin use (P for interaction = 0.27). Our results are consistent with a positive association with alcohol but do not support an association with
folate or
methionine intake or an interaction between
folate and alcohol intake on risk of
breast cancer.