Women Need To More Carefully Look At Studies Reporting Increased Breast Cancer Risks, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Women's Health / Gynecology
Also Included In: Breast Cancer
Article Date: 21 Apr 2008 - 9:00 PDT

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Because the media "understand how deeply women fear breast cancer," studies that report a "link between some new risk factor and the disease mak[e] headlines everywhere," Carol Tavris, a social psychologist and co-author of the book "Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)," and Avrum Bluming, a professor at the University of Southern California and a medical oncologist, write in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

According to Tavris and Bluming, women need "to understand the difference between absolute risk and relative risk" of breast cancer, as well as the "real-life implication" of risk factors that studies find increase the risk of developing breast cancer. In large studies that include "tens of thousands of people, it is very easy to find a small relationship that may be considered 'significant' by statistical convention but that, in practical terms, means little or nothing," the authors write. Many studies that have found certain risk factors -- such as using hormone replacement therapy or gaining more than 33 pounds during pregnancy -- increase the risk of breast cancer; however, such findings "were improbable to begin with" and "were never replicated," Tavris and Bluming write.

Meanwhile, the "reassuring but non-scary news" that HRT might not increase the risk of breast cancer "did not make headlines," the authors write, adding that the "association between [HRT] and breast cancer becomes less obvious with every study." All women "want to understand the risk factors in breast cancer" that "really" do increase risk of the disease, but "to do that we have to give up entrenched beliefs when the data do not support them and look elsewhere," the authors write (Tavris/Bluming, Los Angeles Times, 4/17).

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