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Lifetime physical activity and the incidence of proliferative benign breast disease

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Abstract

Background

Exercise is a modifiable factor that is inversely related to risk for breast cancer. To determine if physical activity has a preventative effect on development of premalignant breast lesions, we examined the association between exercise and the incidence of proliferative benign breast disease.

Methods

In 1997, the Nurses’ Health Study II cohort reported levels of physical activity during adolescence and adulthood using a validated recall instrument. We followed 40,318 participants free from benign breast disease (BBD) or cancer prospectively for four years and confirmed 232 proliferative benign breast lesions by centralized pathology review. Cox proportional hazards models estimated the age-adjusted and multivariable-adjusted relative risks for physical activity and proliferative benign breast disease.

Results

We observed a significant inverse association for walking and incidence of BBD, risk was reduced by 9% per hour of walking (95% CI 0% to 17%), (p trend = 0.05). Despite a small number of cases, risk of columnar cell lesions also suggested an inverse association with strenuous activity (RR for 4 or more hours of strenuous activity per week = 0.62; 0.31–1.22 compared to <1 h per week).

Conclusions

This study suggests that exercise may be inversely associated with the risk of developing proliferative benign breast disease, one of the earliest steps in the development of breast cancer.

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Funding

Public Health Service Grants CA046475, CA050385, SPORE in Breast Cancer CA089393, from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and the American Cancer Society (to G. A. Colditz).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center and Department of Surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Michelle M. Jung & Graham A. Colditz

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Graham A. Colditz & Rulla M. Tamimi

  3. Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Laura C. Collins, Stuart J. Schnitt & James L. Connolly

  4. Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Rulla M. Tamimi

  5. Campus Box 8109, 660 South Euclid Avenue, Suite 2306, St. Louis, MO, 63110, USA

    Michelle M. Jung

Authors
  1. Michelle M. Jung
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  2. Graham A. Colditz
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  3. Laura C. Collins
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  4. Stuart J. Schnitt
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  5. James L. Connolly
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  6. Rulla M. Tamimi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Graham A. Colditz.

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Jung, M.M., Colditz, G.A., Collins, L.C. et al. Lifetime physical activity and the incidence of proliferative benign breast disease. Cancer Causes Control 22, 1297–1305 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9803-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9803-y

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