AACR LogoPostmenopausal women may find this news to be of great relevance. A study claims that reported mid-life augment in BMI could result in considerably elevated threat of postmenopausal breast cancer.

In preceding studies, surplus weight has supposedly been associated with amplified danger of postmenopausal breast cancer. Scientists seem to have pondered that in postmenopausal women, estrogen generated in adipose tissue, or body fat, could endorse breast cell proliferation. Competitively some studies have apparently observed particularly at augment in BMI and its timing in connection to postmenopausal breast cancer risk, which this study has seemingly examined.

The study authors evaluated data from roughly 72,007 women in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial cohort, who were somewhere between 55 to 74 years old at study entry. The investigation encompassed around 3,677 cases of postmenopausal breast cancer. The experts noted the most potent connections among women who had never used menopausal hormone therapy. Apparently, the outcomes were exhibited to only this group of women.

Laura Sue, M.P.H., a cancer research fellow at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), commented, “Compared with women who maintained approximately the same BMI, those who had an increase of 5 kg/m2 or more between age 20 and study entry had a nearly twofold increased risk of breast cancer.”

The outcomes exhibited that almost 57 percent of the study population’s BMI augmented 5 kg/m2 or more between age 20 and study entry. A BMI boost of 5 kg/m2 is seemingly corresponding to a woman of average height, 5’4-inch, putting on roughly 30 pounds.

Women who accounted for a BMI augment of 5 kg/m2 or more between age 20 and 50 were said to have 88 percent increased danger of contracting postmenopausal breast cancer as opposed to women who accounted for a stable BMI. For women who mentioned a BMI increase of 5 kg/m2 or more between age 50 and study entry, risk presumably augmented 56 percent as against women who retained their BMI. BMI gain both prior to and post age 50 seems to independently add to augmented possibility of developing postmenopausal breast cancer.

The study was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010.