Houston: Maintaining the right body weight through out adulthood should be the prime goal of every woman not just for those stunning looks but also for keeping breast cancer at bay, according to a new study.
In the first such investigation into the relationship between weight gain and type of breast cancer, researchers led by Heather Spencer Feigelson of the American Cancer Society found that women who gain weight in adulthood face a higher lifetime risk of all types of breast cancer even if they do not take hormone replacement therapy after menopause.
Greater the weight gain as an adult, the greater is the risk for all histological types, tumor stages, and grades of breast cancer, particularly advanced malignancies.
The most extremely obese women were up to three times more likely to have regional or distant metastases than women with less weight gain.
Breast cancer risk is linked to increased lifetime levels of circulating estrogen.
Moreover, current weight as defined by body mass index is not as important as a woman's weight gain from the age of 18, the study showed.
The researchers investigated the risk between weight gain and type of invasive breast cancer among 44,161 postmenopausal women who were not taking hormone therapy.
They found that the greater the weight gain, the greater the risk for all types, stages, and grades of breast cancer.
Compared to women who gained 20 pounds or less during adulthood, women who gained over 60 pounds were almost twice as likely to have ductal type tumors and more than 1.5 times more likely to have lobular type cancers, the study showed.
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