Who says breast cancer patients should avoid pregnancy?
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Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer can get pregnant and have a baby safely, according to a new review study published on Oct 11, 2010 in European Journal of Cancer.
Many women in modern society delay having a baby due to a variety of reasons and when breast cancer is diagnosed in these women, the patients are often advised to avoid pregnancy because doctors fear pregnancy could adversely affect their disease outcome.
Azim H.A. and colleagues from National Cancer Institute, Cairo University in Cairo, Egypt conducted a meta-analysis of data from 14 studies involving 1244 cases and 18,145 controls and found post-diagnosis pregnancy did not raise risk of death from breast cancer.
They found women who got pregnant after breast cancer diagnosis were actually 41 percent less likely to die from breast cancer compared with those who did not get pregnant. The association was not affected by the type of the study and women's history of node-negative disease.
Even those who had history of breast cancer and got pregnant were at 15 percent reduced risk of death from the disease compared with those who were known to be free of relapse and did not get pregnant. The association was considered insignificant statistically, but it meant at least getting pregnant did not seem to increase the risk of death from breast cancer.
The researchers concluded "This study confirms that pregnancy in women with history of breast cancer is safe and does not compromise their overall survival. Hence, breast cancer survivors should not be denied the opportunity of future conception."
Quite something women can do to reduce risk of death from breast cancer. In addition to treatment, conventional or otherwise, many lifestyle parameters such as physical activity and a healthy diet may be adopted or modified to better the odds for a breast cancer patient to survive the disease.
Breast cancer is diagnosed in more than 175,000 women and the disease kills about 50,000 women each year in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. One in eight women are expected to develop the disease in their lifetime in this country.
More reports will be published here on foodconsumer.org in the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month to help readers better understand the disease and how to prevent it.
Reporting by David Liu and editing by Rachel Stockton
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