Originally published October 11 2005
Researchers quantify the risks of breast cancer for heavy smokers
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
According to new findings from researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, older women who smoked an average of a pack per day for 11 years increased their chances of breast cancer 30 to 40 percent.
What's more, the researchers found that long-term smokers who add combination hormone-replacement therapy (estrogen plus progestin) to the mix increase their odds of getting breast cancer by 110 percent: more than double that of women who've never smoked or taken HRT.
While a number of studies have looked at the association between smoking and breast cancer, many have been inconclusive and many have had conflicting results, Li said, largely because of limitations in data collection, such as not taking into account the duration or intensity of smoking or the timing of smoking onset.
In addition, few previous studies have focused on older, postmenopausal women who've had a particularly long smoking history.
"Ours is one of the only population-based studies of its kind to focus on the association between smoking and breast-cancer risk in older women between the ages of 65 and 79.
Those who did smoke had much longer histories of smoking than women in previous studies, so we were able to look at the effects of long smoking durations on breast-cancer risk," said Li, an assistant member of the Hutchinson Center's Public Health Sciences Division.
This study is the first of its kind to examine a wide variety of smoking parameters, such as how long and how often a woman has smoked, the number of pack years smoked, whether she was a former or recent smoker, her age at smoking onset, and whether she started smoking before her first full-term pregnancy.
Half of the women had a history of breast cancer and half served as a healthy control, or comparison, group.
"We know that smoking is associated with a lot of diseases, from lung cancer to heart disease, but the association with breast cancer is still somewhat controversial," said Li, who is also an assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing LLC takes sole responsibility for all content. Truth Publishing sells no hard products and earns no money from the recommendation of products. NaturalNews.com is presented for educational and commentary purposes only and should not be construed as professional advice from any licensed practitioner. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. For the full terms of usage of this material, visit www.NaturalNews.com/terms.shtml