To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: SABCS: Women With Benign Breast Disease Have Increased Risk of Invasive Breast Cancer URL: http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/225B36.htm Doctor's Guide December 18, 2002
By Coriene E. Hannapel SAN ANTONIO, TX -- December 18, 2002 -- Women with benign breast disease (BBD) have an elevated risk of developing invasive breast cancer, the risk being greater among older women. Treatment with tamoxifen can reduce this risk, but the risk reduction may be greatest for younger women. The elevated risk for women with BBD is present even when controlling for risk factors in the Gail Model breast cancer risk assessment. These findings from the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial (BCPT) of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP), were presented December 13th, at the 25th annual meeting of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, in San Antonio, Texas, United States. The findings were presented by Jiping Wang, MD, National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The study, which demonstrated the value of tamoxifen in reducing the incidence of the disease in more than 13,000 women at increased risk for breast cancer, represents one of the largest studies in recent history in which healthy women were prospectively followed and the diagnosis of all breast biopsies were systematically reported. Records of women from the BCPT cohort who did not have a history of atypical hyperplasia or in situ cancer were analysed. Biopsy pathology reports for these 11,786 women provided information on benign breast disease. Data included in this analysis are from April 1992 to March 1998. Overall, there were 1,301 women who developed BBD, and among these, 29 women subsequently developed breast cancer. There were 10,006 women who did not develop BBD, and among them 193 later developed breast cancer. There were several important findings from this study, Dr. Wang said. Women with BBD had a 1.78 times higher risk of developing invasive breast cancer than those without BBD. The relative risks of breast cancer for women with BBD compared to those without benign breast disease were found to be similar across treatment arms -- 1.69 in the placebo group vs. 1.73 in the tamoxifen arm. When the researchers compared the risk of breast cancer for women in the tamoxifen group with those in the placebo group, they found that women with BBD treated with tamoxifen had a lower risk of breast cancer than those given placebo. Similarly, for women who did not have BBD, those treated with tamoxifen had a lower risk of breast cancer than those on placebo. When stratifying for age, women 49 years of age or below have an annual rate of breast cancer of 5.85 vs. 4.61 for women with and without benign breast disease, respectively. "Although women have benign breast disease in this age group, the risk of developing breast cancer fails to reach statistical significance at the 0.05 level," Dr. Wang said. Women 50 years or older with BBD had a 2.58 times higher chance of developing invasive breast cancer than those without BBD. For women with BBD, their risk for getting invasive breast cancer was 1.78 times higher than those without BBD, which means that there is a significant association between the two, Dr. Wang said. Even after a five-year risk factor adjustment from Gail's model was used, the researchers found that benign breast disease was still significantly associated with breast cancer. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 1999 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of P\S\L content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of P\S\L. P\S\L shall not be liable for any errors, omissions or delays in this content or any other content on its sites, newsletters or other publications, nor for any decisions or actions taken in reliance on such content. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This news story was printed from *Doctor's Guide to the Internet* located at http://www.docguide.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to News Story Page This site is maintained by webmaster@pslgroup.com Please contact us with any comments, problems or bugs. All contents Copyright (c) 1998 P\S\L Consulting Group Inc. All rights reserved.