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Pregnancy-related characteristics and breast cancer risk

Cancer Causes & Control volume 24, pages 1675–1685 (2013)Cite this article

Abstract

Breast tissues undergo extensive physiologic changes during pregnancy, which may affect breast carcinogenesis. Gestational hypertension, preeclampsia/eclampsia, gestational diabetes, pregnancy weight gain, and nausea and vomiting (N&V) during pregnancy may be indicative of altered hormonal and metabolic profiles and could impact breast cancer risk. Here, we examined associations between these characteristics of a woman’s pregnancy and her subsequent breast cancer risk. Participants were parous women that were recruited to a population-based case–control study (Western New York Exposures and Breast Cancer Study). Cases (n = 960), aged 35–79 years, had incident, primary, histologically confirmed breast cancer. Controls (n = 1,852) were randomly selected from motor vehicle records (<65 years) or Medicare rolls (≥65 years). Women were queried on their lifetime pregnancy experiences. Multivariable-adjusted logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95 % confidence intervals (CIs). N&V during pregnancy was inversely associated with breast cancer risk. Relative to those who never experienced N&V, ever experiencing N&V was associated with decreased risk (OR 0.69, 95 % CI 0.56–0.84) as were increased N&V severity (p trend < 0.001), longer duration (p trend < 0.01), and larger proportion of affected pregnancies (p trend < 0.0001) among women with ≥3 pregnancies. Associations were stronger for more recent pregnancies (<5 years). Findings did not differ by menopausal status or breast cancer subtype including estrogen receptor and HER2 expression status. Other pregnancy characteristics examined were not associated with risk. We observed strong inverse associations between pregnancy N&V and breast cancer risk. Replication of these findings and exploration of underlying mechanisms could provide important insight into breast cancer etiology and prevention.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (P50-AA09802), and the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (DAMD-179616202, DAMD 17030446).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Affiliations

  1. Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, The Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA

    Theodore M. Brasky & Peter G. Shields

  2. Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, School of Public Health and Health Professions, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Yanli Li, David J. Jaworowicz Jr., Jing Nie, Carole B. Rudra & Jo L. Freudenheim

  3. Department of Pharmacometric Services, Cognigen Corporation, Buffalo, NY, USA

    David J. Jaworowicz Jr.

  4. Office of the Associate Director of the Applied Research Program, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Nancy Potischman

  5. Department of Cancer Prevention and Control, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Christine B. Ambrosone

  6. Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health and Health Professions, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Alan D. Hutson

  7. School of Biomedical Education, The City College of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Maurizio Trevisan

  8. Department of Surgical Oncology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Stephen B. Edge

  9. The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, 1590 N. High St., Suite 525, Columbus, OH, 43201, USA

    Theodore M. Brasky

Authors
  1. Theodore M. Brasky
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  2. Yanli Li
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  3. David J. Jaworowicz Jr.
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  4. Nancy Potischman
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  5. Christine B. Ambrosone
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  6. Alan D. Hutson
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  7. Jing Nie
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  8. Peter G. Shields
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  9. Maurizio Trevisan
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  10. Carole B. Rudra
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  11. Stephen B. Edge
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  12. Jo L. Freudenheim
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Correspondence to Theodore M. Brasky.

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Brasky, T.M., Li, Y., Jaworowicz, D.J. et al. Pregnancy-related characteristics and breast cancer risk. Cancer Causes Control 24, 1675–1685 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-013-0242-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-013-0242-9

Keywords

  • Gestational hypertension
  • Gestational diabetes
  • Nausea
  • Pre-eclampsia
  • Pregnancy weight gain
  • Vomiting