Breast cancer survivors may have babies

Women who survive breast cancer are often advised against having babies because doctors believe that hormonal changes during pregnancy could spur the recurrence of the disease.

A new study presented Friday at a European breast cancer conference in Barcelona suggests that pregnancies after breast cancer treatments do not increase risk of the recurrence in breast cancer survivors.

The study led by Dr. Hatem Azim of the Institute Jules Bordet in Belgium and colleagues meta-analyzed data from 14 previous trials and found no increased risk for the breast cancer survivors who opted to become pregnant.

Specifically, Dr. Azim et al. compared more than 1,400 pregnant women with a history of breast cancer with more than 18,00 women who had had breast cancer and were not pregnant after treatment.

They found breast cancer survivors who were pregnant were actually 42 percent less likely to die than breast survivors who did not get pregnant.

Dr Azim explained one possibility is that those who chose to have babies were naturally healthier. But he said some studies compared breast cancer survivors who later were pregnant to those who were the healthiest breast cancer survivors.

Experts suggest the advice for patients should depend on their health status including the severity of the disease.  In many cases, patients are advised to take certain drugs for a number of years after treatment and they should be advised against becoming pregnant after treatment. the AP reported.

Another study presented at the same conference suggests that eating less and exercising more may drastically reduce breast cancer cases.

Carlo La Vecchia from the University of Milan said if women were thinner and exercised more, the risk of getting breast cancer could be reduced by 25 to 30 percent.

In the United States, breast cancer is expected to be diagnosed in more than 170,000 women each year and the disease kills about 50,000 women annually, according to cancer.gov. One in every eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.

One early study led by British researchers found obese women were at 60 percent higher risk of developing any cancer than women with normal weight, according to media reports.

One possibility for the breast cancer and obesity link is that the fatter women are, the more estrogen they produce, according to Vecchia.  Estrogen is known to promote the growth of breast cancer.

By David Liu