THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 7, 1994 TAG: 9407070618
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Some benign breast growths that are common in young women appear to double the risk of breast cancer later in life, according to a study released today.
Another report published today found that having a child temporarily increases the risk of breast cancer, but lowers it later in life.
Dr. William Dupont and others from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., found that women with growths called fibroadenomas face about double the usual risk of breast cancer.
Fibroadenomas are typically diagnosed when women are in their 20s. Many experts have believed they are unrelated to later development of cancer.
The Vanderbilt study found the increased risk was highest in women whose close relatives had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was also more elevated in those who had a particular variety of growths called complex fibroadenomas.
``Since fibroadenomas are commonly diagnosed before the age of 30, these lesions provide a means of identifying young women who have an increased risk of breast cancer decades before the onset of invasive disease,'' the researchers wrote.
They suggested that women with both complex fibroadenomas and a family history of breast cancer should begin having regular mammograms at age 35 or 40.
The childbirth study complicates another commonly held belief about breast cancer. Women have traditionally been told that having a child helps ward off breast cancer. But the new data suggest the link between pregnancy and cancer is not so simple.
The study compared the risk of breast cancer in women who have had one child or remained childless. For the first 15 years after they gave birth, the mothers' risk was higher than that of other women. Then it fell lower.
The older a woman is when she has a child, the higher her risk of breast cancer immediately after her delivery.
For instance, a 35-year-old woman who just had her first child faces a 41 percent higher risk of breast cancer than a childless woman the same age. But by age 59, the same woman's risk is 21 percent lower than the childless woman's.
A 35-year-old woman who gave birth at age 25 has an 8 percent higher risk of breast cancer than does a childless woman the same age. At age 59, her risk is 29 percent lower.
The risk is lowest in those who give birth at age 20. By the time they reach 30, it is just 2 percent higher than the childless woman's, and at 59 it is 32 percent lower.
The study was directed by Dr. Mats Lambe of University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden. It was based on a review of 12,666 women with breast cancer and 62,121 the same age who had not gotten the disease.
The researchers speculate that pregnancy increases the short-term risk of cancer by stimulating the growth of cells that have already begun the early stages of malignancy.
Both studies were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
KEYWORDS: STUDY BREAST CANCER by CNB