An examination of obesity and breast cancer survival in post-menopausal women

Abstract

(Boring et al., 1992). Epidemiological studies have shown that obesity is associated with a poor prognosis of survival from breast cancer (Donegan et al., 1978; Boyd et al., 1981; Tartter et al., 1981; Zumoff & Dasgupta, 1983; Greenberg et al., 1985;Newman et al., 1986; Hebert et al., 1988; Mohle-Boetani et al., 1988; Kyogoku et al., 1990;Tretli et al., 1990; Senie et al., 1992; Bastarrachea et al., 1994

Angiogenic factors are elevated in overweight and obese individuals

“…1,21 Furthermore, there is circumstantial evidence from epidemiological surveys that suggests that angiogenesis may be enhanced in human obesity. Obesity has been reported by many 3,22-24 but not all investigators 25,26 to increase the risk of tumor progression and metastatic disease in patients with breast cancers. The situation in prostate cancer is more complex since the risk of prostate cancer in obese men is lower than lean men possibly because of the lower testosterone levels associated with obesity.…”

Social class and weight as prognostic factors in early breast cancer

“…Goodwin and Boyd (1990) reviewed 14 such studies before 1990 and identified a modest effect of body size on prognosis (smaller women doing better), the effect being greatest in post-menopausal women and in those with little or no involvement of axillary nodes. Nevertheless, some more recent reports (Ewertz et al, 1991;Gordon et al, 1992;Katoh et al, 1994) have been unable to show convincingly an improvement of prognosis with decreasing weight or some index of obesity.These studies vary considerably in patient numbers and in whether or not adjustments have been made for other prognostic factors. In addition, their conclusions have often been based on follow-up periods of 5 years or less, so that the considerable number of deaths from breast cancer that occur more than 5 years after first treatment have not always played a part in the analyses.…”

“…Goodwin and Boyd (1990) reviewed 14 such studies before 1990 and identified a modest effect of body size on prognosis (smaller women doing better), the effect being greatest in post-menopausal women and in those with little or no involvement of axillary nodes. Nevertheless, some more recent reports (Ewertz et al, 1991;Gordon et al, 1992;Katoh et al, 1994) have been unable to show convincingly an improvement of prognosis with decreasing weight or some index of obesity.…”

Body mass index and breast cancer survival in relation to the introduction of mammographic screening

“…At least five studies report no association between overweight/obesity and mortality in breast cancer patients. [17][18][19][20][21] Except for the study by den Tonkelaar [21], the proportion of screening detected tumours in these studies was not given.…”