Newspaper Clipping Service

National Documentation Centre (NDC)

Breast cancer

Breast Cancer genetic risk not affected by lifestyle factor(Medical News Today)

Women's risk of developing breast cancer due to common genetic differences is not affected by lifestyle
factors such as weight, diet, alcohol, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), having children and
breastfeeding, concluded UK researchers.

The study, led by a team at the University of Oxford, is published 2 June as an early online publication in
the The Lancet.

Lead author Dr Ruth Travis, an epidemiologist who specializes in investigating the genetic, hormonal and
lifestyle determinants of cancer, told the press that we know lifestyle and genetic factors affect breast
cancer risk, but this research shows that lifestyle factors do not influence the genetic risks, their influence
is independent of one another:

"We looked at whether lifestyle factors for breast cancer, such as use of HRT, alcohol consumption and
reproductive history, influence the genetic risks: and the answer is that they do not," said Travis,
according to a Reuters report.

Travis and colleagues found that for most women, modifiable lifestyle factors influence breast cancer risk
more than inherited genes.

Co-author Dr Jane Green, also an epidemiologist at Oxford with interests in how environment affects
cancer risk, said:

"Genes account for only a small proportion of breast cancers, and for most women the main risk factors
remain the lifestyle factors such as child bearing, use of HRT, obesity and alcohol consumption."

She said the good news is that some of these lifestyle factors are modifiable, so women can change their
risk of breast cancer by changing their behaviour.

For the large prospective UK-wide study, Travis, Green and colleagues compared 7,160 women with
breast cancer with 10,196 who did not have the disease. They examined the effect of 12 polymorphisms
(genetic variations) and ten established lifestyle factors, such as age when they had their first baby,
breastfeeding, age at menopause, use of HRT, BMI, height and consumption of alcohol.

The found no evidence that any of the lifestyle and genetic factors combined to raise the risk further. They
wrote that:

"After allowance for multiple testing none of the 120 comparisons yielded significant evidence of a gene-
environment interaction."

They wrote this was in contrast with previous suggestions that HRT use influenced genetic risk, "either
overall or for oestrogen-receptor-positive disease".