Background: Obesity is a global health problem. It is becoming increasingly prevalent in Saudi Arabia. High body mass index (BMI) is a risk factor for many diseases, including cancer. Noticeably, breast cancer (BC) cases in Saudi Arabia occur at a younger age than in western countries. Different lifestyle behaviors such as maintaining healthy body weight and physical activity may play a role in this. In this study, we investigated the association between BMI and BC adverse clinicopathological features. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted by reviewing the records of women with non-metastatic BC over 4 years. The association between BMI and patients' demographics, BC histological type, receptor status, differentiation grade, tumor size, involvement of axillary lymph nodes, and performed procedures were analyzed. Result: 315 patients with non-metastatic BC were studied. The mean age at the time of diagnosis was 52.43 years ± 11.63. The mean BMI was 30.21 ± 5.77. The mean tumor size was 3.19 cm ± 3.52. The mean age of diagnosis is significantly higher in obese women than in other BMI groups ( P = 0.025). Obese female patients aged ≥40 were more likely to present with larger tumor ( P = 0.022) and numerically higher pathological axillary lymph nodes, trending toward statistical significance ( P = 0.092). Conclusion: The relationship between BMI and developing more aggressive BC is still not clear; in this study, we found that obese patients presented at an older age, with larger tumor and more pathologic lymph nodes. Further research to understand the impact of this finding on outcomes is warranted.
Background: Obesity is a global health problem, especially in the Arab region, the prevalence of obesity is increasing. High body mass index (BMI) is a risk factor for many diseases, including cancer. Noticeably, breast cancer (BC) cases in Saudi Arabia occur at a younger age than western countries and different life style behaviours such as maintaining healthy body weight and physical activity may play a role in this. In this study, we aimed to investigate the association between BMI and BC clinicopathological features. Methods: This retrospective study was conducted by reviewing the records of females diagnosed with non-metastatic BC over four years. The association between BMI and patients’ demographics, BC histological type, receptor status, differentiation grade, tumor size, involvement of axillary lymph node, and performed procedures was analysed. Result: We studied 315 patients with non-metastatic BC. The mean age at the time of diagnosis was 52.43 years ±11.63. The mean BMI was 30.21±5.77. The mean tumor size was 3.19 cm ± 3.52. We found that the mean age of diagnosis is significantly greater in obese women than other BMI groups with a P-value = 0.025. A significant relationship was observed between BMI classification and tumor size in obese female patients aged ⩾ 40 years with P-value=0.022 Conclusion: The relationship between BMI and BC is still not clear, in this study we found an association with age at diagnosis and tumor size in older patients, characteristics as histological types, receptor status, lymph node involvement, and grade were not statistically significant.
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