Study: Weight gain tied to breast cancer risk

The amount of weight a woman gains after age 18 is a strong signal as to whether she will get breast cancer later in life, according to new research released Wednesday by the American Cancer Society. The study could be particularly worrying for lesbians, health officials say, because breast cancer is more common in lesbian women than heterosexual women and one of the factors for the increased risk is obesity. The current study, one of the largest studies of weight and breast cancer to date, says older women who gained 20 to 30 pounds after high school graduation were 40% more likely to get breast cancer than women who kept the weight off. The risk doubled if a woman gained more than 70 pounds, said Heather Spencer Feigelson, senior epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society. "Breast cancer is strongly dependent on body weight," Feigelson said. "Even modest amounts of weight gain lead to a significantly increased risk of breast cancer." Weight gain and body mass have long been known to be risk factors for breast cancer. The cancer society estimates that weight contributes to between one third and one half of all breast cancer deaths among older women. Fat tissue makes estrogen, and estrogen can help breast cancer grow. "The more fat you have--fat cells are capable of synthesizing estrogen--the heavier you are, the higher your estrogen levels," said Paul Tartter, associate professor of surgery at Columbia University, who was not a researcher in the study. "There's no question that estrogen is the common denominator of most of our risk factors for breast cancer." Weight gain also is the second leading cause of all cancers, according to research the Atlanta-based society published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine. The cancer society study included 1,934 breast cancer cases among 62,756 women involved in a separate long-term cancer prevention study. Postmenopausal women ages 50 to 74 were asked their weight when the study began in 1992 and their weight when they were 18 years old. Surveys were sent to the women in 1997, 1999, and 2001 to inquire about any new cancers. Lean post-menopausal women not taking hormone replacement therapy produce very little estrogen and had the lowest cancer risk in the study, Feigelson said.