Can breast milk help doctors screen for breast cancer?
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by Aimee Keenan-Greene
Someday every woman who delivers a baby in a hospital will have their breast milk screened for breast cancer.
That's the hope of researchers who say examining the breast milk may provide a more accurate result than conventional screening.
The new research was presented by the American Association of Cancer Research .
They claim a woman's breast cancer risk can be assessed by examining the epithelial cells found in breast milk.
Cancer can be difficult to detect during pregnancy and lactation.
Breast cancer develops in the breast tissue, primarily in the milk ducts (ductal carcinoma) or glands (lobular carcinoma). It usually begins with the formation of a small, confined tumor (lump) and then spreads through channels to the lymph nodes or through the blood stream to other organs.
Lead researcher Kathleen F. Arcaro, Ph.D., associate professor of veterinary and animal sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says "this screening method has the potential to provide a personalized assessment of breast cancer risk given that roughly 80 percent of women give birth, this screen would also cover a large percentage of the female population."
Arcaro and colleagues collected breast milk samples from about 250 women who were scheduled for or who had a breast biopsy. The women submitted fresh samples from both breasts, which were processed within 24 hours of expression.
Researchers isolated the potentially cancerous cells in the breast milk and then isolated the DNA to look for epigenetic signals, attachment of methyl groups to DNA, which are the signals that tell the body those genes that should be expressed.
These signals were then compared with breast cancer risk assessed using the biopsy results.
Scientists analyzed three out of the 35 genes known to be methylated in breast cancer: RASSF1, GSTP1 and SFRP1.
Of the 104 women with a non-proliferative low-risk lesion, results showed no difference in the average epithelial DNA methylation of their biopsied breast vs. non-biopsied breast for RASSF1 and GSTP1.
But, for SFRP1, the average methylation was higher in the biopsied breast.
Among the women whose biopsies revealed cancer, there was a significant increase in average RASSF1 methylation in the biopsied breast vs. non-biopsied breast.
Long-term studies are currently under way with about 80 percent of the original participants enrolled in following up on the breast milk screenings.
“It’s totally noninvasive, potentially inexpensive and really accurate.”, Arcaro added.
The researchers recruited about 90 percent of their study population from the Love/Avon Army of Women, which registers women who are willing to participate in breast cancer research.
The American Association for Cancer Research is a scientific partner.
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