Smoking Magnifies Breast Cancer Risk for Some Women

Conducted by researchers at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN, USA), the study was published in the May 2001 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

The study showed that sisters and daughters of the participants who smoked were 2.4 times more likely to develop breast cancer compared to those who had never smoked. Moreover, women in very high-risk families in which five or more cases of breast or ovarian cancer had occurred were 5.8 times more likely to develop breast cancer. The findings were in apparent contrast to a 1998 study conducted by Canadian researchers that showed smoking lowered the risk of developing the disease. The Mayo Clinic Study includes a broader spectrum of women at high risk for breast cancer, not just women with BRCA1 and 2 gene mutation carriers.

"This would make cigarette smoking one of the more significant risk factors for breast cancer in high risk families,” says Dr. Fergus Couch, a molecular geneticist at Mayo Clinic and lead author of the current study. "The most significant risk factor is a family history of the disease.”




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