Reaching for a bottle of red at the end of a busy week in general practice? It may be best to find another way to relax, with UK research showing drinking a bottle of wine comes with the same cancer risk as smoking up to 10 cigarettes.

Women draw the short straw when it comes to cancer risk, according to the University of Southampton analysis, with a bottle of wine per week significantly increasing their absolute lifetime risk of cancer by 1.4%. 

The absolute cancer risk for women was almost identical to that associated with smoking 10 cigarettes a week (1.5%), thanks to a 55% increase in breast cancer risk with drinking, they reported in BMC Public Health.

For men, swilling a bottle of plonk was less risky than smoking 10 cigarettes a week (1% absolute risk vs 2.1%) but was still significant and equivalent to smoking five cigarettes per week.