Breast Cancer Risk — Obesity is a well-established risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Prior studies by Drs. Howard Strickler and Marc Gunter and colleagues, suggested that insulin might help explain this breast cancer – obesity relationship. But whether obese women with normal insulin levels (so called “healthy-obese”) also had high breast cancer risk was unknown. In a new study by the research team, published in Cancer Research, high insulin levels were associated with elevated breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women whether they were of normal-weight or obese, while healthy-obesity was not associated with elevated breast cancer risk. These findings suggest that breast cancer prevention efforts need to focus on metabolic health status (versus obesity). Funding to conduct this research was awarded to Dr. Strickler by the NCI/NIH. Dr. Strickler is a professor of epidemiology & population health. Dr. Gunter, a former colleague at Einstein, is currently at Imperial College’s School of Public Health, London.
Posted on: Thursday, April 02, 2015