In a new study, scientists explain how and why getting pregnant at a young age reduces the risk of breast cancer in women.
Previous studies have found strong evidence that when a woman gets pregnant at a younger age, her changes of being affected by breast cancer are reduced. While studies have found evidence that confirmed this fact, not many studies were carried out on the mechanism behind it. Now, a research in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research explains why this happens.
According to the study which was carried out on mice, the Wnt/Notch signalling ratio is decreased in the breast tissue of mice that had already given birth as compared to mice that hadn't. The study mentions that all the mice in the study were of the same age. Hence, scientists confirmed that in humans, becoming pregnant before the age of 20 reduces the risk of breast cancer.
"The activity of one particular gene Wnt4 was also down-regulated after pregnancy. The protein from this gene (Wnt4) is a feminising protein -- absence of this protein propels a fetus towards developing as a boy. Wnt and Notch are opposing components of a system which controls cellular fate within an organism and when the team looked at Notch they found that genes regulated by notch were up-regulated, Notch-stimulating proteins up-regulated and Notch-inhibiting proteins down-regulated," reports scientists.
Mohamed Bentires-Alj from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, who led this study explained, "The down-regulation of Wnt is the opposite of that seen in many cancers, and this tightened control of Wnt/Notch after pregnancy may be preventing the runaway growth present in cancer."
