Risk of Mortality Due To Breast Cancer Increases With Duration Of Smoking

Highlighting the lethal effects of cigarettes, a Japanese study shows that long-time smokers may face an increased risk of death due to breast cancer. More than 800 women with breast cancer, those who had smoked for more than two decades had at least triple the odds of dying of any cause, or from breast cancer in particular, compared with women who never used cigarettes.

Fewer years of smoking were also linked to an increased risk of death from breast cancer, but the extra risk was so small that it might have been due to chance.

The study assessed the impact of the duration of smoking on outcomes for women, said study co-author Dr. Masaaki Kawai, a breast oncologist at Miyagi Cancer Center Hospital in Japan.

Worldwide, breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. About one in nine women will eventually develop it, according to the National Institutes of Health. The risk increases with age, from 1 in 227 at age 30 to 1 in 26 by age 70. Factors such as obesity, inactivity, alcohol use or early menstruation can increase the risk.

Kawai and colleagues followed 848 women who were treated at the Miyagi Cancer Center Hospital between 1997 and 2007 for newly diagnosed breast cancer.

Women who described themselves as current smokers were typically younger when their breast cancer was diagnosed, about 49 years old on average, compared with 53 for women who claimed to be former smokers and 58 for nonsmokers.

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The current smokers had more advanced tumors, fewer health complications than the other women in the study. In a span of 7 years, there were 170 deaths from all causes – including 132 deaths from breast cancer.

In this subset, those who had smoked for more than about 21 years were three times more likely to die of any cause, and nearly three and a half times more like to die of their breast cancer, than those who never used cigarettes.

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Researchers also examined exposure to second-hand smoke among women whose husbands were current or former smokers and found no significant impact on the women’s risk of death from any cause or from breast cancer specifically.

Peggy Reynolds, a researcher at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and Stanford University School of Medicine said, “There are now quite a few studies suggesting that active smokers diagnosed with breast cancer have poorer survival – not to mention accumulating evidence that smokers may have a greater risk of developing breast cancer.”

Source-Medindia