Red wine has been touted as beneficial to cardiovascular health, but new research suggests that drinking more than a certain amount of that favourite Merlot or Shiraz may actually be harmful for breast cancer. (Pier Paolo Cito/Associated Press)

There's apparently no difference between drinking red or white when it comes to wine's effect on breast cancer rates — and both appear to have a negative impact, U.S. researchers say.

Following previous studies on heart disease and prostate cancer that pointed to potential beneficial effects from red wine, the researchers wanted to see if it similarly affected breast cancer.

"We were interested in teasing out red wine's effects on breast cancer risk," said the study's lead author, Dr. Polly Newcomb, head of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle.

"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," Newcomb added in a release.

The study, which appeared in the March issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, concludes that it doesn't.

"If a woman drinks, she should do so in moderation — no more than one drink a day," Newcomb advised. "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."

In the study, the researchers looked at the medical histories of 6,327 women from three U.S. states with breast cancer, and 7,558 women who were also aged 20 to 69 and acted as controls.

The women were asked how often they drank red wine, white wine, liquor and beer and about other risk factors for breast cancer.

Women who consumed 14 or more drinks per week, regardless of type, faced a 24 per cent increase in breast cancer risk compared with non-drinkers.

The frequency of alcohol consumption was about the same in both groups, and about the same proportion of women in both groups said they drank red and white wine.

Two weeks ago, British researchers concluded that downing as little as one alcoholic drink a day seems to increase a woman's risk for developing cancer, based on their study of nearly 1.3 million middle-aged women.

The U.S. National Cancer Institute, a branch of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, funded the latest research.