Smoking Does Not Worsen Breast Cancer

By Madeline Vann
HealthDay Reporter
Tuesday, October 30, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

MONDAY, Oct. 29 (HealthDay News) -- It may be unhealthy in many other ways, but smoking does not appear to raise the odds that a woman with breast cancer will have more aggressive or later-stage malignancy at the time of diagnosis, researchers report.

Their results come from an analysis of data gathered on more than 6,000 women for more than 35 years.

"Smoking did not affect treatment options either," noted lead researcher Dr. Matthew Abramowitz, a resident in radiation oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

Abramowitz said he had expected to find that smokers were less likely to have surgeries, such as mastectomies, because of the physical health problems associated with smoking, but the data showed otherwise. Women with breast cancer who smoked or had ever smoked were just as likely to have surgery as those who did not smoke.

About one in 10 of the breast cancer patients was a smoker when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Abramowitz said.

The findings were expected to be presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology, in Los Angeles.

Smoking has been shown to be a risk factor for cancers of the lung, head, neck, esophagus and bladder. However, studies testing for a possible link between smoking and breast cancer risk have been inconclusive.

"This study says nothing about the rate of breast cancer or whether women are more likely to get breast cancer if they smoke. But it's interesting that smoking did not affect the cancer that we saw," said Abramowitz.

Despite the findings, women who smoke are still putting their health at great risk, stressed Dr. Michael J. Thun, vice president of epidemiology and surveillance research at the American Cancer Society.

"The study results don't change anything for women who smoke. They still have a one in two chance of being killed by smoking if they don't quit and a one in eight lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. More American women have died from lung cancer than breast cancer since 1987," Thun noted.