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Overweight, Obesity, Diabetes, and Risk of Breast Cancer: Interlocking Pieces of the Puzzle

Overview
Journal Oncologist
Publisher Oxford University Press
Specialty Oncology
Date 2011 Jun 3
PMID 21632448
Citations 68
Authors
Carlo La Vecchia
Sharon H Giordano
Gabriel N Hortobagyi
Bruce Chabner
Affiliations
Soon will be listed here.
Abstract

We considered epidemiological data on overweight, diabetes, insulin, and breast cancer. Overweight is inversely related to premenopausal breast cancer, but there is definite evidence that, as compared with normal weight women, the relative risk (RR) for postmenopausal breast cancer is around 1.5 for overweight women and >2 for obese women, and that the association is stronger in elderly women. Overweight and obesity are strongly related to diabetes. Diabetes is associated with postmenopausal breast cancer, too, with summary RRs from meta-analyses of 1.15-1.20, but not with premenopausal breast cancer (RR, 0.9). There is no consistent evidence that fasting insulin is related to breast cancer risk. Thus, although overweight and obesity are strongly related to postmenopausal breast cancer, diabetes is only moderately related to it. Given the extent of the association, and the likely residual confounding by overweight, inference on causality for the diabetes-breast cancer relation remains open to discussion.

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