Breast cancer and BMI: new data
Scientists have uncovered an unusual link between fat and breast cancer
Slim women whose body contains an unusually high amount of fat are noticeably more likely to suffer from breast cancer than their peers with a normal mass of adipose tissue, said doctors who spoke at the annual conference of the American Association for Cancer Research (High Body Fat Levels Are Associated With Increased Breast Cancer Risk in Postmenopausal Women With Normal BMI).
"Such results are likely to surprise both doctors and their patients, since the body mass index is now used to assess the risks associated with excess weight and other metabolic problems. We hope that our discovery will make women think that fat can contribute to the development of breast cancer even if they have a normal BMI," said Andrew Dannenberg from Cornell University (USA).
In recent years, scientists have found more and more hints that obesity not only increases the load on the skeleton, contributes to the development of metabolic problems and is one of the causes of diabetes, but also negatively affects other parts of the body. For example, recently scientists from the USA found out that excess weight in women contributes to the recurrence of breast cancer, as well as accelerates brain aging and causes changes in brain function.
Dannenberg and his colleagues found that these negative effects are actually more complicated than they seemed to their discoverers, observing the lives of about 3.5 thousand women of Balzac's age for about 16 years. During this time, about two hundred of them became victims of various forms of breast cancer, which helped doctors to assess how the likelihood of its development is affected by extra pounds.
The initial analysis of these data revealed an extremely unexpected thing – it turned out that the probability of developing cancer did not depend on the body mass index, as scientists previously believed, but on how much fat was present in their body. In other words, women with a low BMI, whose body contained abnormally high body fat, suffered from cancer more often than their peers with a similar mass, but a smaller proportion of body fat.
As scientists' calculations show, an increase in fat mass by about 5 kilograms increased the likelihood of developing severe forms of breast cancer by 35%, even in cases when the women themselves did not suffer from obesity and were considered slim. A similar pattern, as Dannenberg concludes, doctors should take into account when diagnosing cancer and conducting regular examinations among older women.
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