Sleep and Breast Cancer in the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study

Overview

Journal J Clin Sleep Med

Specialties Neurology
Psychiatry

Date 2017 Dec 5

PMID 29198300

Citations 6

Authors

Caila B Vaughn

Jo L Freudenheim

Jing Nie

Lara Sucheston-Campbell

Jean Wactawski-Wende

Catalin Marian

Peter G Shields

Bhaskar V Kallakury

Maurizio Trevisan

Heather M Ochs-Balcom

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Study Objectives: Night shift work is associated with increased breast cancer risk, possibly from altered sleep. Epidemiologic evidence is sparse regarding sleep disturbances and breast cancer tumor markers. We examined sleep disturbance in association with breast tumor aggressiveness and mortality following diagnosis.

Methods: We analyzed associations of measures of sleep disturbance in a sample of 1,122 incident breast cancer cases from the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study. Sleep disturbance was assessed using self-administered questionnaires; responses about difficulty falling asleep, waking up frequently, having trouble staying asleep, and waking up feeling tired and worn out were used to create a summary sleep disturbance score. We used general linear models to examine associations of sleep disturbance with markers of tumor aggressiveness among cases: estrogen receptor (ER) status, progesterone receptor (PR) status, and human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) status; tumor size, stage, grade, lymph node involvement, and presence of metastasis. In addition, we examined the association between sleep disturbance and survival using Cox regression.

Results: Among breast cancer cases, sleep disturbance was higher for women with ER- / PR- tumors compared to women with ER+ / PR+ tumors, even after adjusting for potential covariates ( for trend = .02). Results suggest that the association of sleep quality differs by menopausal status, where mild sleep disturbance is associated with higher breast cancer mortality in premenopausal women; however, we had a relatively small sample size.

Conclusions: Sleep disturbance may be associated with aggressive subtypes of breast cancer; however, further studies are needed.

Citing Articles

Association of sleep duration and all-cause and cancer-specific mortality: results of 2004 national health interview survey (NHIS).

Biswas P, Adebile T, Sejoro S, Liu M, Zhang X, Tu W Sleep Biol Rhythms. 2025; 23(1):55-65.

PMID: 39801935 PMC: 11717743. DOI: 10.1007/s41105-024-00551-y.

Are depression and poor sleep quality a major problem in Turkish Women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer?.

Buyuksimsek M, Gulmez A, Pirinci O, Tohumcuoglu M, Kidi M Rev Assoc Med Bras (1992). 2024; 70(3):e20231377.

PMID: 38656011 PMC: 11042824. DOI: 10.1590/1806-9282.20231377.

Sleep duration and mortality among breast cancer survivors in the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study.

Nair N, Vaughn C, Ochs-Balcom H, Nie J, Trevisan M, Freudenheim J Cancer Causes Control. 2023; 35(1):103-109.

PMID: 37594683 DOI: 10.1007/s10552-023-01774-z.

Sleep and breast and prostate cancer risk in the MCC-Spain study.

Turner M, Gracia-Lavedan E, Papantoniou K, Aragones N, Castano-Vinyals G, Dierssen-Sotos T Sci Rep. 2022; 12(1):21807.

PMID: 36526666 PMC: 9758125. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-25789-9.

Depression and Sleep Quality among Iranian Women with Breast Cancer.

Shorofi S, Nozari-Mirarkolaei F, Arbon P, Bagheri-Nesamie M Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2021; 22(11):3433-3440.

PMID: 34837896 PMC: 9068183. DOI: 10.31557/APJCP.2021.22.11.3433.

References

Lin X, Chen W, Wei F, Ying M, Wei W, Xie X . Night-shift work increases morbidity of breast cancer and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis of 16 prospective cohort studies. Sleep Med. 2015; 16(11):1381-1387. DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2015.02.543. View

Kakizaki M, Kuriyama S, Sone T, Ohmori-Matsuda K, Hozawa A, Nakaya N . Sleep duration and the risk of breast cancer: the Ohsaki Cohort Study. Br J Cancer. 2008; 99(9):1502-5. PMC: 2579702. DOI: 10.1038/sj.bjc.6604684. View

Levine D, Kripke D, Kaplan R, Lewis M, Naughton M, Bowen D . Reliability and validity of the Women's Health Initiative Insomnia Rating Scale. Psychol Assess. 2003; 15(2):137-48. DOI: 10.1037/1040-3590.15.2.137. View

Nielsen T, Hsu F, Jensen K, Cheang M, Karaca G, Hu Z . Immunohistochemical and clinical characterization of the basal-like subtype of invasive breast carcinoma. Clin Cancer Res. 2004; 10(16):5367-74. DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-04-0220. View

Hansen J . Increased breast cancer risk among women who work predominantly at night. Epidemiology. 2001; 12(1):74-7. DOI: 10.1097/00001648-200101000-00013. View

He C, Anand S, Ebell M, Vena J, Robb S . Circadian disrupting exposures and breast cancer risk: a meta-analysis. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2014; 88(5):533-47. DOI: 10.1007/s00420-014-0986-x. View

Wulff K, Porcheret K, Cussans E, Foster R . Sleep and circadian rhythm disturbances: multiple genes and multiple phenotypes. Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2009; 19(3):237-46. DOI: 10.1016/j.gde.2009.03.007. View

Palesh O, Aldridge-Gerry A, Zeitzer J, Koopman C, Neri E, Giese-Davis J . Actigraphy-measured sleep disruption as a predictor of survival among women with advanced breast cancer. Sleep. 2014; 37(5):837-42. PMC: 3985107. DOI: 10.5665/sleep.3642. View

Schernhammer E, Kroenke C, Laden F, Hankinson S . Night work and risk of breast cancer. Epidemiology. 2005; 17(1):108-11. DOI: 10.1097/01.ede.0000190539.03500.c1. View

10.

Blask D, Sauer L, Dauchy R . Melatonin as a chronobiotic/anticancer agent: cellular, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms of action and their implications for circadian-based cancer therapy. Curr Top Med Chem. 2002; 2(2):113-32. DOI: 10.2174/1568026023394407. View

11.

Jenkins C, Stanton B, Niemcryk S, Rose R . A scale for the estimation of sleep problems in clinical research. J Clin Epidemiol. 1988; 41(4):313-21. DOI: 10.1016/0895-4356(88)90138-2. View

12.

Thompson C, Li L . Association of sleep duration and breast cancer OncotypeDX recurrence score. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2012; 134(3):1291-5. PMC: 3409927. DOI: 10.1007/s10549-012-2144-z. View

13.

Collis S, Boulton S . Emerging links between the biological clock and the DNA damage response. Chromosoma. 2007; 116(4):331-9. DOI: 10.1007/s00412-007-0108-6. View

14.

Stevens R . Circadian disruption and breast cancer: from melatonin to clock genes. Epidemiology. 2005; 16(2):254-8. DOI: 10.1097/01.ede.0000152525.21924.54. View

15.

Han D, Nie J, Bonner M, Ambrosone C, Marian C, Shields P . Clustering of place of birth for women with breast cancer: differences by tumor characteristics. Cancer Causes Control. 2012; 24(3):587-94. DOI: 10.1007/s10552-012-9997-7. View

16.

Wu A, Wang R, Koh W, Stanczyk F, Lee H, Yu M . Sleep duration, melatonin and breast cancer among Chinese women in Singapore. Carcinogenesis. 2008; 29(6):1244-8. PMC: 2574570. DOI: 10.1093/carcin/bgn100. View

17.

Qin Y, Zhou Y, Zhang X, Wei X, He J . Sleep duration and breast cancer risk: a meta-analysis of observational studies. Int J Cancer. 2013; 134(5):1166-73. DOI: 10.1002/ijc.28452. View

18.

Blask D . Melatonin, sleep disturbance and cancer risk. Sleep Med Rev. 2008; 13(4):257-64. DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2008.07.007. View

19.

Levine D, Kaplan R, Kripke D, Bowen D, Naughton M, Shumaker S . Factor structure and measurement invariance of the Women's Health Initiative Insomnia Rating Scale. Psychol Assess. 2003; 15(2):123-36. DOI: 10.1037/1040-3590.15.2.123. View

20.

Tao M, Shields P, Nie J, Millen A, Ambrosone C, Edge S . DNA hypermethylation and clinicopathological features in breast cancer: the Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer (WEB) Study. Breast Cancer Res Treat. 2008; 114(3):559-68. PMC: 4408917. DOI: 10.1007/s10549-008-0028-z. View