According to a recent study, it is important to consider breast density as a risk factor in the appearance of breast cancer.
In France, 58,500 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in 2018. If there are certain risk factors, it is impossible to avoid the occurrence of breast cancer. “The best thing is still to detect the disease as quickly as possible, so as to simplify treatment and considerably increase the chances of recovery. The purpose of screening is to detect among people who are a priori not sick those who present anomalies likely to be cancerous or to evolve into cancer in order to treat them quickly.“, recommended the Cancer League.
And some risk factors are better known to women than others. Indeed, according to a recent study, it is important to consider breast density as a risk factor. Dense breast tissue has been linked to an up to four times higher risk of breast cancer. These findings were published in JAMA Network Open. This study was carried out on 1,858 women aged 40 to 76 from 2019 to 2020. All said they had recently had a mammogram, had no history of breast cancer and had heard of breast density, such as the detailed CNN.
A risk four times higher
Participants compared the risk of breast density to five other risk factors for breast cancer: having a first-degree relative with breast cancer, being overweight or obese, drinking more than one alcoholic beverage per day, never having children and having had breast cancer before.
“Compared to other known breast cancer risks, women did not perceive breast density as a significant risk“, said Laura Beidler, author of the study and researcher at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, quoted by CNN. In this study, the authors give the example of dense breast tissue associated with risk 1, 2 to 4 times higher risk of breast cancer compared to twice the risk associated with having a first-degree relative with breast cancer.
How to explain the link? “One hypothesis is that women who have denser breast tissue also have higher levels of estrogen, circulating estrogen, which contributes to both breast density and the risk of developing breast cancer.“, pointed out Dr. Harold Burstein, breast specialist and oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Before completing: “Another hypothesis is that there is something in the tissue itself, making it more dense, that somehow predisposes to the development of breast cancer. We don’t really know which one explains the sighting“.
VIDEO – Dr Christian Recchia: “Breast cancer in women is 12,000 deaths per year in France”
