Diabetes, Obesity After 60 May Drive Up Breast Cancer Risk

TUESDAY, Dec. 6 (HealthDay News) -- A woman's risk of developing breast cancer appears to rise if she has diabetes or is obese after age 60, a new study indicates.

Previous research has linked obesity and increased breast cancer risk, but "the diabetes link had not been clearly shown," said researcher Dr. Hakan Olsson, a professor of oncology at Lund University in Lund, Sweden.

He is scheduled to present his findings this week at the 2011 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The diabetes link held even after he accounted for obesity and levels of blood lipids, such as cholesterol. It is an association, however, not proven cause and effect.

A strength of the study, Olsson said, is that it looked at the population as a whole, not only women with breast cancer. He studied the medical records of more than 2,700 patients for up to 10 years before they developed breast cancer and also records for about 20,500 patients who never developed cancer.

Obesity after age 60 boosted breast cancer risk by 55 percent, Olsson said. To put this in perspective, while 15 of 100 obese women, at the most, would get breast cancer, fewer than 10 of 100 women in the general population would be expected to get breast cancer, Olsson explained.

Up to four years after a diabetes diagnosis, women of any age had a 37 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer, he said.

Olsson also found a link between abnormally low levels of blood lipids or fats, mostly cholesterol, and a 25 percent higher risk of breast cancer. Women with higher cholesterol levels had a lower risk, he found.

This puzzling finding needs to be studied more, the researcher noted.

The type of diabetes drug a woman takes also seemed to influence breast cancer risk, Olsson said. Glargine (Lantus) was linked with a nearly doubled risk of breast cancer. However, metformin (Glucophage, Fortamet, others) was linked with a slightly lower risk.

"If a woman has diabetes, she should be aware that certain cancer forms might appear [more often], and one is breast cancer," Olsson said.

Women with diabetes might also ask their doctor which diabetes drug is best for them and will minimize their cancer risk, he said. However, the study numbers were too small to conclude these drugs directly affect cancer risk, he added.

The new finding is the diabetes and cancer link, said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women's heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. But it doesn't surprise her, she said.

"We've known that obesity is associated with breast cancer," she said. "A lot of obese people have diabetes."

The take-home message for women, she said, is that minimizing their breast cancer risk -- now, trying to maintain a healthy weight and avoid diabetes -- will also help their heart health, Steinbaum said.

Olsson will continue the research and explore the lipid level and breast cancer link. Meanwhile, women should watch their weight and aim for a body mass index (BMI) of less than 25, Olsson said. BMI is a calculation based on height and weight. A BMI of 25 or higher is considered overweight, and 30 or over is obese.

Because this research was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

To learn more about obesity and cancer, visit the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

Obesity Linked to Worse Outcomes With Early Breast Cancer

WEDNESDAY, Dec. 7 (HealthDay News) -- Obese women with early stage breast cancer are less likely to survive than other women who are of normal weight, new research suggests.

Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine are slated to present their findings Wednesday at the 2011 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

"The findings add to the body of evidence indicating that obesity, in general, increases a patient's chance for having a worse prognosis," lead researcher Dr. Sao Jiralerspong, an assistant professor of medicine at Baylor, said in a symposium news release. "Obesity is a probable risk factor for worse breast cancer outcomes, and ours is the latest study to suggest it has an effect on treatment outcome as well."

In conducting the study, researchers analyzed the link between weight and treatment of 4,368 women with early-stage breast cancer over the course of 25 years. The investigators found that the participants who were overweight had survival rates that were similar to the women of normal weight, but those who were obese had an increased risk for shorter time to recurrence, and worse disease-free and overall survival.

Although the obese women who received no additional chemotherapy or endocrine therapy had worse outcomes, the study noted that obese patients who received chemotherapy fared significantly worse than normal-weight patients.

Jiralerspong suggested that biological factors linked to extra weight -- such as higher blood insulin and estrogen levels, inflammation and growth factors secreted by fat cells -- could help explain these findings.

The researchers also revealed, however, that obese women treated with endocrine therapy, primarily tamoxifen, had significantly better survival rates than women who were of normal weight.

"Finding that overweight patients have a better outcome than normal-weight patients after tamoxifen treatment is surprising. We are examining the possible reasons for this," noted Jiralerspong.

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

In addition, more research is needed to understand how obesity affects treatment for breast cancer, particular since new treatments have been introduced since the study was conducted, the researchers added.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about the link between obesity and cancer.

The Vitamin to Shield Against Breast Cancer

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

In my final installment on the sunshine vitamin’s effects on cancer prevention, we’ll look at how it could help shield against breast cancer. And I leave you with some important final thoughts.

*Read the first three parts of this series here:
Part 1: The Cancer-fighting Vitamin Revealed
Part 2: More Great News on the Cancer-fighting Vitamin
Part 3: How This Vitamin Supports Cancer Prevention

In the first national nutrition survey, 190 adult women with breast cancer were found amid a random sampling of about 5,000 women. This study showed that vitamin D could protect a woman from breast cancer up to 20 years later! Thus, proper vitamin-D intake at all times during life is important.

Another long-term study with more than 88,000 women showed that higher levels of vitamin D were linked with a lower breast cancer risk in premenopausal women. More calcium and vitamin D meant less dense breast tissue, in which cancer thrives. For postmenopausal women, getting at least 1,250 milligrams (mg) of calcium meant a lower risk of breast cancer than those getting under 500 mg. But here calcium and vitamin-D supplements didn’t have any impact on cancer risk.

A study from Norway strongly suggests that getting high levels of vitamin D3 from sunlight at the time a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer improves the prognosis.

Vitamin D’s protection might extend to many other cancers, too. For example, some scientists have shown that UV light and vitamin D could reduce an incredible 17 different types of cancer, including: bladder, non Hodgkin’s lymphoma, uterine cancer, renal, rectal, prostate, ovarian, gastric, esophageal, colon, and breast. More studies, as usual, need to be done.

I and my colleagues in the area of vitamins offer these five bits of advice about improving your vitamin-D levels and maintaining good health:

1. Request a blood measurement of active vitamin D as part of every physical.

2. Reasonable exposure to the sun in the spring, the summer and the fall is about 15 minutes a day. The best times are between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., with your arms, legs, face and hands exposed.

3. After the initial exposure, apply a quality sunscreen to protect your skin.

4. If you do not get sun exposure in a day, take 1,000 IU of vitamin D through diet and through supplements.

5. Foods include fatty fish, shrimp, liver, eggs, enriched milk, and dairy products, and fortified bread and cereals.

Tags: Breast Cancer, cancer cure, foods that prevent cancer, how to prevent cancer, natural cancer cures, Natural Cancer Prevention, vitamin D

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Steps Women Can Take To Lower Breast Cancer Risk, Report

Featured Article
Main Category: Breast Cancer
Also Included In: Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 08 Dec 2011 - 8:00 PST

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A new Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released on Wednesday concludes there are some evidence-based steps women can take to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer associated with environmental factors. These include avoiding unnecessary medical radiation (such as unessential X-rays and CT-scans), not smoking, avoiding use of estrogen-progestin menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) if possible, limiting alcohol intake, keeping to a healthy weight (especially after the menopause), and exercising regularly.

The report, which was released at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, and is also available to view online, points out that these are preventive steps that focus on those environmental risk factors (including lifestyle choices) where there is consistent scientific evidence of a link with breast cancer.

It also suggests there is evidence, although this is less clear, of a link between breast cancer and exposure to certain chemicals, such as those found in some workplace settings, gasoline fumes, vehicle exhaust, and tobacco smoke. These include benzene, 1,3-butadiene, and ethylene oxide.

The IOM says there are other areas where evidence is "provocative" and inconclusive, but sufficient to warrant "priority attention" such as overnight shift work and other ways that disrupt the sleep cycle; chemicals that mutate genes or alter their expression, or affect hormones such as estrogen; plus interactions between genetic and environmental factors.

Contrary to some popularly held beliefs, avoiding personal use of hair dyes, and non-ionizing radiation emitted by technological devices like mobile phones, will not affect a woman's risk of breast cancer, says the IOM report, as several studies now have shown no link between these factors and the disease.

Overall, the report find there have been some major advances in our understanding of breast cancer and the things that raise the risk of developing it, but we need to do more research to find out exactly what causes the disease and how to prevent it.

Over the course of a lifetime, many changes happen to a woman's body, including her breasts. New information suggests women and girls may be susceptible to different risk factors at different life stages, so the IOM recommends that future research takes a "life-course approach" to studying the effects of exposure throughout the lifespan, including at specific stages of breast development. It needs to look at cumulative exposure as well as multiple exposure over the lifespan.

Too much of our knowledge is based on studies that focus on the few years before diagnosis, but more recent research suggests we also need to look at exposure that happens much earlier in life, even in childhood, as well as key stages in physiological development and change, such as adolescence, pregnancy, and menopause.

The report uses the term "environment" in a broad sense, and reviews evidence on a range of factors that women encounter in their day to day lives. These factors include: ionizing radiation, combination estrogen-progestin hormone therapy, body weight after the menopause, and physical exercise. But for many other factors, the evidence from human studies is either limited, contradictory, or absent, says the report.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization that describes itself as the "largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists", commissioned the IOM report.

The brief was to review the current evidence on breast cancer and the environment, including gene-environment interactions, look at the research challenges, explore any actions that women might take to reduce their risk where there is good evidence to support this, and recommend directions for future research.

Since its inception in 1982, the organization has invested more than $1.9 billion in non-profit funds to fight breast cancer around the world.

Their President, Elizabeth Thompson, said in a statement that:

"Understanding the role that environmental factors play in the development of breast cancer is hugely complex and the IOM has done a good job laying out the challenges. We intend to use these findings to guide our decisions about research to fund, so that women and their families have the best science to guide them in making important lifestyle choices. We believe our efforts going forward will be made even more effective through the guidance provided by this study."

Thompson drew attention to the fact the IOM stressed more research is needed before we can get a clear picture of which substances can definitely be tied to breast cancer. She said the organization is now:

"... issuing a challenge to other agencies working in the environmental area to join with Susan G. Komen to create a fund to begin work on these very important initiatives."

Estimates suggest more than 230,000 American women will receive a diagnosis for breast cancer in 2011.

Written by Catharine Paddock PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Visit our breast cancer section for the latest news on this subject. Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2012, "Breast Cancer and the Environment: A Life Course Approach"; Washington DC, The National Academies Press; Released online 7 December 2011; Click here to follow link for free online viewing.
Additional sources: Institute of Medicine (IOM); http://ww5.komen.org/ Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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posted by Da on 8 Dec 2011 at 12:51 pm

Every now and then, reports came out saying women can control their chances of having BC, weigh management, alcohol, life style. I'm sick and angry at these reports. It camouflage the truth, that those of us who have BC do not know why. I'm slim, Asian, never drink, never smoke, never do drug of any kinds, eat organic healthy diet, exercise and out of the blue I got BC. These articles gave permission to others to view my cause of BC as not taking care of myself, that I AM CAUSING my BC. Bull^@%#%S%

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posted by Jeanne Bedwell on 8 Dec 2011 at 3:04 pm

These researchers need to speak plainly: formaldehyde, petroleum distillates, alcohol, ethanol limonene, naphthalene, phenal, pinene, benzyl alcohol, campher, dichlorobenzene, and other harmful chemicals are found in scented candles, air-fresheners, lotions, shampoos, soaps, other hair and body products, and cosmetics. These products are marketed to the public as "nice," "clean," "fresh," "healthy" and so on----but they are really evil products that cause migraines, allergies, asthma, cancer, and other ailments.

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