Breast Cancer – Risk Factors
A risk factor is anything that increases your chance of getting a disease, but the fact you have one or several risk factors doesn’t mean you are going to have the disease. In the same time, the fact you are not having any risk factor doesn’t mean you will never have cancer, but the probability to have breast cancer is bigger if you have a risk factor and it’s increasing with their number.Most women who have one or more breast cancer risk factors never develop the disease, while many women with breast cancer have no apparent risk factors (other than being a woman and growing older). Even when a woman with breast cancer has a risk factor, there is no way to prove that it actually caused her cancer.
There are a lot of factors incriminated in breast cancer genesis and I will try to put them in two big categories:
1. Factors you cannot change:
• Gender: Being a woman is the bigger risk factor for breast cancer. Men can also develop breast cancer, but this disease is about 100 times more common among women than men.
• Age: As a woman ages, her risk of breast cancer also increases. About 77% of women with breast cancer are over age 50 at the time of diagnosis. Women between the ages of 20 and 29 account for only 0.3% of breast cancer cases.
• Genetic risk factors: Recent studies have shown that about 10% of breast cancer cases are hereditary as a result of gene mutation.
• Personal history: Women who have had breast cancer in one breast are three to four times more likely to develop breast cancer in the opposite breast than women who have never had breast cancer.
• Family history: A woman’s risk for developing breast cancer increases if her mother, sister, or daughter had breast cancer, especially at a young age. Having two first-degree relatives increases her risk 5-fold.
• Race: White women are slightly more likely to develop breast cancer than are African-American women. African-American women are more likely to die of this cancer, because they have more aggressive tumors. Asian, Hispanic, and Native-American women have a lower risk of developing and dying from breast cancer.
• Previous chest radiation: Women who as children or young adults had radiation therapy to the chest area as treatment for another cancer (such as Hodgkin disease or non-Hodgkin lymphoma) are at significantly increased risk for breast cancer.
• Menstrual periods: Women who started menstruating at an early age (before age 12) or who went through menopause at a late age (after age 55) have a slightly higher risk of breast cancer.
2. Factors you can change:
• Not having children: Women who have had no children or who had their first child after age 30 have a slightly higher breast cancer risk. Having multiple pregnancies and becoming pregnant at an early age reduces breast cancer risk.
• Oral contraceptive use: Studies have suggested that women now using oral contraceptives have a slightly greater risk of breast cancer than women who have never used them. Women who stopped using oral contraceptives more than 10 years ago do not appear to have any increased breast cancer risk.
• Postmenopausal hormone therapy: Long-term use (several years or more) of postmenopausal hormone therapy, particularly estrogen and progesterone combined, increases your risk of breast cancer.
• Breast-feeding: Some studies suggest that breast-feeding may slightly lower breast cancer risk.
• Alcohol: Use of alcohol is clearly linked to an increased risk of developing breast cancer. The risk increases with the amount of alcohol consumed. The American Cancer Society recommends limiting your consumption of alcohol.
• Obesity: Obesity (being overweight) has been found to be a breast cancer risk in all studies, especially for women after menopause.
• There is a much higher incidence of breast cancer in areas with high fat diets (such as the United States) than areas with low-fat diets (such as Japan).
Factors not related to breast cancer: fibrocystic breast changes, multiple pregnancies, coffee or caffeine intake, antiperspirants, underwire bras, abortion or miscarriage, breast implants.
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Since you are a doctor, you should list the papers to support what you say. Just a suggestion.