Article for the ladies - abdominal fat and breast cancer

[Irishgirl]

Abdominal fat may up breast cancer mortality

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Excess abdominal fat may be related to a higher risk of death among some women with breast cancer, new study findings suggest.

It's too early to tell whether shedding extra pounds might lower a breast cancer patient's death risk over time, but the findings raise that possibility, the study's lead author, Dr. Marilyn J. Borugian, told Reuters Health.

She and her colleagues report the results in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

In the study, a woman's risk of dying within 10 years of a breast cancer diagnosis rose in tandem with waist-to-hip ratio-but only for those who were postmenopausal and had tumors sensitive to estrogen. This means that the hormone estrogen fuels the cancer growth.

Among these women, those with the highest waist-to-hip ratios--the greatest amount of abdominal fat--were about three times as likely as those with the lowest waist-to-hip ratios to die. The finding was independent of body mass index, meaning that it was fat distribution, and not overall weight, that appeared key.

But while the study suggests that shedding abdominal fat might cut a woman's risk of dying from breast cancer, there's no research evidence proving that yet, said Borugian, a researcher at the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver.

"We need to do a study where women actually modify their waist-to-hip ratio and then we follow them to see if that makes a difference," she explained.

A number of previous studies have tied higher waist-to-hip ratio to an increased risk of developing breast cancer, or of dying from the disease--premenopausal women included, Borugian and her colleagues point out.

It's possible, the researchers speculate, that high levels of the blood sugar-regulating hormone insulin could be at work. Insulin resistance and chronic elevations in insulin levels in the blood often go hand in hand with excess body fat, and the hormone has been shown to stimulate estrogen receptors in breast cancer cells. In addition, both insulin and fat tissue can spur the production of estrogen and other sex hormones.

The current study included roughly 600 women; by the end of follow-up, 146 had died, mainly of breast cancer.

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, November 15, 2003.

Last Updated: 2003-12-03 12:43:34 -0400 (Reuters Health)