Anorexics have lower risk of breast cancer

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Eating Disorders
Article Date: 10 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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According to a survey young women who suffered from anorexia run a lower risk of getting breast cancer. Experts are now wondering whether there is a link between calorie intake in early life and the development of cancer.

The experts have also warned that girls should not become anorexic because of this news. Anorexia is a serious mental disorder with life-threatening complications.

The findings of this study could help scientists understand how breast cancer develops.

Young women who had been in hospital because of anorexia were 50% less likely to develop breast cancer than women who had never suffered from anorexia.

The next step is to try to figure out what the real mechanisms may be...to explain the connection," said co-author Karin Michels, associate professor at Harvard Medical School who did the research with Dr. Anders Ekbom of Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.

You can read about this study in this weeks edition of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).

Experts have known for a long time that there is a link between weight gain and breast cancer.

Michels said calorie restriction during early adolescence might stunt breast cell reproduction and reduce the chance for mutations to occur that could lead to cancer.

Also, calorie restriction during crucial phases of development might reduce levels of estrogen and other hormones that are linked to tumor development, Michels said. Girls with anorexia often stop menstruating, which reduces their estrogen levels.

Reduced estrogen exposure is the most likely explanation for the results, but the study is far from proof of any link between anorexia and a reduced breast cancer risk, said Dr. Charles Loprinzi, a Mayo Clinic breast cancer specialist.

Once the mechanisms are better understood, scientists might be able to design an intervention, including medication, 'that is more practical than just generalized starvation,' said researcher Margot Cleary of the University of Minnesota's Hormel Institute.

The researchers examined breast cancer incidence in 7,303 Swedish women who were under 40 when they underwent hospital treatment for anorexia between 1965 and 1998. Most developed anorexia before age 20.

Only seven women developed breast cancer by the study's end in 2000. Nearly 15 cases would have been expected in the general population, a difference of 53 percent. That translates to about one anorexic woman developing breast cancer out of 1,000, compared with two out of 1,000 in the general population.

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