Reducing Weight to Reduce Risk
In yet another study linking increased weight to breast cancer risk, researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have determined that younger women who are extremely overweight when they are diagnosed may have lower survival rates from the disease.
Writing in the journal Cancer, Dr. Janet Daling and colleagues reported on their study of 1,177 women under age 45 who had invasive ductal breast cancer. They found that women with the highest (top 25 percent) body mass index one year prior to diagnosis were more than twice as likely to die of their disease during the five year follow-up period.
The heaviest women were more likely to be diagnosed with larger and more aggressive tumors, they wrote, and the tumors were more likely to be estrogen-receptor negative. When the researchers analyzed tumors that were 2 cm or larger, they found that those from the heaviest women were more likely to express markers "indicating they may have grown faster than similar size tumors of the thinnest women."
"Body mass index may be an important clinical prognostic factor," they concluded, "that should be considered in the process of working up breast carcinoma cases and be considered in the treatment decision making."
The bottom line: For many reasons, losing weight should be a priority for overweight women. But this is especially true for women who are already at high risk for breast cancer due to family history or other factors.
And yet, obesity among women (and men) is on the rise. In a series of presentations at the 11th European Congress on Obesity in Vienna, Austria, experts decried the rates of obesity in industrialized nations that have become "epidemic." This directly results in millions of cases of cancer and other disease-related illnesses, they warned.
According to estimates from the World Health Organization, one in 12 breast cancers in postmenopausal women can be directly attributed to obesity. And many more cases can be at least be indirectly linked to high-fat diets.
SOURCES:
Cancer, August 15, 2001; 92:720-729
11th European Congress on Obesity, Vienna, Austria, May 30, 2001
"National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey," U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov)
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