By Amanda Chan MyHealthNewsDaily updated less than 1 minute ago 2011-04-06T22:40:31

-Heavy beer drinkers have an increased risk of gastric cancer, especially if they possess a certain gene variant, a new study suggests.

People who drink two to three beers a day for many years have a 75 percent increased risk of gastric cancer, and those who have the gene variant called rs1230025 but aren't heavy drinkers have a 30 percent higher risk of gastric cancer, compared with people who drank less than a beer daily, the study showed.

But people who are both chronic heavy beer drinkers and possess rs1230025 have a more than 700 percent increased risk of gastric cancer compared with people who consume less than one drink a day and don't have the gene variation, said study researcher Eric Duell, a senior epidemiologist at the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain. The gene variant is common and is present in about 20 percent of the general population, he said.