A recent study has revealed that frequent alcohol consumption by girls in their teen years might end up increasing the chances that they would develop non-cancerous breast disease by the time they hit their 20s. This further increases the chances of developing breast cancer later in life.

The research discovered that girls who consumed the most alcohol during their teenage, which means everyday or almost everyday, were as much as 5 times more at risk of developing benign breast disease as young adults as compared to their peers who never consumed alcohol or drank less than once a week.

Benign Breast Disease or BBD is inclusive of various nonmalignant conditions. Fibroadenoma, a noncancerous tumor, is the most commonly occurring in those who are aged 30 or younger. Catherine Berkey, the study co-author, who is a biostatistician at Harvard Medical School in Boston, shared that it is a known fact that benign breast disease ends up boosting the risk for developing breast cancer.

"Our study may suggest that teen drinking increases the risk for breast cancer, whether in all females or in those who go on to develop BBD, but longer-term follow-up is certainly required to confirm it", she said.

Details of the study, which involved as many as 6,899 girls ranging from the age of 9 to 15, are all set to be published in the May issue of Pediatrics.