Obesity seems to be dominating the globe with incidences of BMI, blood pressure and cholesterol almost doubled from 1980 to 2008. Well, here is another investigation which puts forth the probable harmful effects of this condition. A latest study asserts that obese women are at a higher threat of being diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer. Around 10 to 20 percent of all breast cancers probably account for triple-negative breast cancer and are connected to an extremely poor prognosis due to insufficient targeted drug therapies.
In this study, experts evaluated data from the 155,723 women enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative. Levels of baseline BMI as well as recreational physical activity among 307 women suffering from triple-negative breast cancer and 2,610 women with estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer were evaluated. It then appeared that women with the highest BMI had a 35 percent higher threat of triple-negative breast cancers and a 39 percent increased risk of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers.
“The body of literature, primarily meta-analyses, has shown most of the risk between obesity and breast cancer to be among the estrogen receptor-positive subtypes,” added Amanda Phipps, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “This paper raises questions about the possible role of growth factors or inflammation, but these will need to be explored with larger patient groups with known breast cancer subtypes, especially triple-negative breast cancers.”
Volunteers with high rates of physical activity allegedly had 23 percent lower chances of triple-negative breast cancer and a 15 percent decreased risk of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer. In conclusion, scientists registered a seeming link between obesity, physical activity and triple-negative breast cancer, which is a subtype of breast cancer characterized by a lack of estrogen, progesterone and HER2 expression.
The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.