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Smoking before menopause may boost breast cancer risk

01/25/2011 22:08:00 admin
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Women addicted to cigarettes before menopause, especially prior to giving birth, would be likely to face a modest increase in their risk of developing breast cancer, according to a study by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

In 2007 in the United States, 202,964 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and 40,598 women died from the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The researchers examined the medical records of 111,140 women who were actively smoking from 1976 to 2006 and 36,017 women who were exposed to secondhand smoke from 1982 to 2006.

The results showed 8,772 breast cancer cases developed during follow-up. The breast cancer was linked to the amounts of intake and the age of beginning smoking.

"Smoking before menopause was positively associated with breast cancer risk, and there were hints from our results that smoking after menopause might be associated with a slightly decreased breast cancer risk," the authors wrote.  "This difference suggests an anti-estrogenic effect of smoking among postmenopausal women that may further reduce their already low endogenous estrogen levels."  

However the results also indicated that light and moderate smoking did not seem to increase the risk and secondhand smoke exposure was not linked to an increased breast cancer risk either, though the exposure was hard to measure.

People began smoking before age 18 could be at the most risk of developing breast cancer, so did those who smoked more than 35 years and/or smoked 25 or more cigarettes a day.

"Postmenopausal women in particular have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease," said Karin Michels, a cancer epidemiologist and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"If she adds smoking on top of that, I think it's bad. This is definitely not a license to smoke."

To avoid breast cancer, women should control their weight, take regular exercise and limit the amount of alcohol intake.

Stephen Lau and editing by Denise Reynolds
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