Women who were of more than normal birth weight or were not breast-fed may be at a higher risk of breast cancer than others.
Researchers from the University at Buffalo who presented this finding at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting say that this is especially true for women in their pre-menopausal age.The researchers have reported that intrauterine and the neonatal phase is the most important phase of life for the development of the mammary glands. The environment at this stage of like is likely to cause hormonal changes in the newborn that may later be expressed as tendency of development of malignant tumors in the breast.
The researchers had studied biological details of 845 women with breast cancer and 1573 women as controls. Their results have showed that pre-menopausal women whose birth weights were more than 8.5 pounds, and those who have not been breast fed as a child have twice the risk of having breast cancer than women who were of birth weight less than that, and who were breast fed.
The results did not hold good for women of postmenopausal age.
