Breast cancer survival linked to when woman last had a baby

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 21 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   view / write opinions   rate article

Women have a higher risk of dying from breast cancer if they have had a baby within two years of the cancer being diagnosed, say Australian researchers.

The researchers collected the data from the Australian Breast Cancer Family Study to asses the impact of recent childbirth before diagnosis or subsequent deaths in 750 premenopausal women.

The study was carried out by Dr. John Hopper, University of Melbourne and his colleagues.

They found that the highest death rates from breast cancer occurred in women who had had a baby within two years of diagnosis - the figure was 28%.

If the women had had a baby between two to five years before diagnosis their death rate was 24%.

Those who had had a baby more than five years before diagnosis ran a 16% risk.

The risk for women who had never had children was 14%.

As the interval between giving birth and having a breast diagnosis increased, there was a 10% drop in mortality for each year.

The women whose interval was less than two years were the ones most likely to have aggressive tumours (tumors).

In general, women who had never had children ran a 50% lower risk than women who had had a child.