Young women who smoke more than one pack of cigarettes a day for a year or more are at a higher risk of developing the most common type of breast cancer.
While people are aware of breast cancer, not many know that there are various sub types of this disease. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center researchers conducted one of the first studies that looked into how cigarette smoking increases the risk of developing various types of breast cancer, Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer being the most common type.
For the study, researchers examined 778 patients with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer and 182 patients with triple-negative breast cancer. All participants were aged between 20 and 44 years and were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2004 and 2010. A controlled group of 938 cancer-free participants was also included in the study.
At the end of the study, researchers noted that women who were current or recent smokers and had been smoking a pack a day for at least 10 years had a 60 percent increased risk of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer.
"The health hazards associated with smoking are numerous and well known. This study adds to our knowledge in suggesting that with respect to breast cancer, smoking may increase the risk of the most common molecular subtype of breast cancer but not influence risk of one of the rarer, more aggressive subtypes," said Christopher Li, MD, PhD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle in a statement.
Findings of the study were published online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
Breast Cancer is the most common form of cancer among women in the United States. One in every 8 American women develops invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime, according to a CDC report. In 2013, 232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed in women in the U.S., along with 64,640 new cases of non-invasive (in situ) breast cancer.
Breast cancer is not restricted to women alone. According to the report 2,240 new cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed in men in 2013. However, a man's lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.
Click here for more information on the various types of breast cancers.