- To: meeds_c <meeds_c@wpb1.dep.state.fl.us>
- Subject: Altering Risk of Breast Cancer (NewsClip) (fwd)
- Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 14:27:11 EST
- A1-type: MAIL
- Delivery-date: Thu, 3 Aug 1995 07:15:00 EST
- Importance: normal
- Posting-date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 15:30:53 EST
- Sender: Carol Meeds <hippie@pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us>
Carol Meeds
hippie@pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 12:31:25 -0400
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
To: STUDIES IN WOMEN AND ENVIRONMENT <ecofem@csf.colorado.edu>
Subject: Altering Risk of Breast Cancer (NewsClip)
The New York Times, August 2, 1995, p. A17.
Moving to Different Country Alters Risk of Breast Cancer
By Natalie Angier
It may be something in her diet, or the air and water of
her new home, or the vigilance of her doctor, or stress or
exhilaration or none of the above. Whatever the cause, when
a woman moves to a new country, her risk of dying from
breast cancer will either rise or fall to match that of
women native to her adopted land researchers have found.
The new study, an examination of changes in the patterns of
breast cancer deaths among a broad array of immigrant
groups in Australia and Canada, suggests that environmental
factors continue to influence a woman's chances of
contracting breast cancer throughout adulthood and that the
effect can occur over relatively short spans of time.
The work thus contradicts current notions that most of a
woman's risk of breast cancer is set by puberty or early
adulthood. It also suggests that by comparing migrant
populations, scientists may get a handle on how women can
modify their lives to avoid this hated malignancy.
Most of the women in the study moved to Australia or Canada
as adults, and yet within 30 years or less their rate of
breast cancer deaths often was indistinguishable from that
of local residents. For those women who migrated from a
country where the breast tumor rate was lower than in her
new home, the risk of the cancer rose; but for those coming
from nations where breast cancer is even more prevalent
than in Australia and Canada, the risk of cancer dropped.
The new report, by Dr. Erich V. Kliewer of Australian
National University in Canberra and Dr. Ken R. Smith of the
University of Utah in Salt Lake City, appears today in the
Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
In it, the researchers compiled data on nearly 60 groups of
immigrants from all parts of the world, calculating what
their breast cancer mortality rate would have been in their
homelands, what it proved to be in Australia or Canada, and
how that compared with the prevailing rate among the
native-born population.
Previous studies of cancer patterns among migrants have
focused on people moving from countries with low cancer
rates, like Japan, to those with high cancer rates, like
the United States, showing that as a rule the rate of
cancer among the transplanted Japanese eventually mounted
to Western dimensions.
The new study takes the compelling twist of seeing whether
the opposite is true as well, and whether moving from a
high-risk environment can have an incidental benefit in
lowered cancer rates. The answer in many cases appears to
be yes.
For example, the researchers calculated that among the
English, the rate of breast cancer deaths in women 35 to 74
years old -- the range of the women considered in this
study -- is 68 per 100,000. By comparison, among
Englishwomen who moved to Australia, the figure dropped to
57 deaths per 100,000 women, more in keeping with the death
rate of 50 per 100,000 for the Australian natives.
"The importance of this study is that it reinforces our
notion that your risk of breast cancer isn't something
you're born with," said Dr. Noel S. Weiss, professor of
epidemiology at the University of Washington School of
Public Health in Seattle, "but rather something that can be
influenced by your experiences. They show us that the rates
are capable of going down as well as up."
But the scientists embroidered their work with abundant
caveats. Most important, they do not know why the cancer
rates change from one place to another. They have no idea
what it is about the Australian or Canadian way of life
that either encourages or inhibits breast cancer in any
particular group.
Like the United States, these nations tend to have a
relatively highfat, low-vegetable diet, though all this is
changing as people limp toward healthier habits. By the
same token, Australia and Canada, like the United States,
have comparatively good health-care systems, which
emphasize mammography and other methods of detecting breast
cancer in its early stages, before it becomes fatal.
The current report looks only at breast cancer deaths, not
at overall incidence. Thus, if women moving to Australia or
Canada end up with more vigilant medical care, their rate
of cancer deaths may drop with no alteration in their
habits, exposure to environmental toxins, or other risk
factors.
Moreover, not all migrant groups show a shift in cancer
death rates in their assumed land. Instead, the figures
over all indicate a marked trend toward matching those of
their new homeland. In Australia, 83 percent of the
immigrant groups converged in their breast cancer death
rates over a 30-year period toward that of the natives. In
Canada, the rates were somewhat less than that.
"Our final conclusion is that there's a
convergence," Dr.
Smith said, "a tendency toward the prevailing mortality
rate. But we tried not to make too much of any one group or
population."
Dr. Susan Love, director of the Revlon-U.C.L.A. Breast
Center in Los Angeles, praised the study and said it was
the sort of large-scale epidemiological work needed to
disentangle environmental factors from underlying genetic
predisposition.
She said that women might be born with risky mutations in
any number of genes, including such widely trumpeted
players as the BRCA-I gene, p53, the AT gene and so forth;
yet the environment can serve to either stimulate or quell
such innate predispositions, she said. "Things that cause
progression of tumors, rather than their initiation," she
said, "may continue throughout adulthood."
Because many of the migrant groups being studied are
relatively genetically homogeneous, she said, they may
allow researchers to zero in on environmental risk factors.
Dr. Love argued that, in seeking risk factors, too much
emphasis had been placed on fat and not enough on other
things in the diet, like compounds in plant foods; she also
believes that the possible impact of exercise in reducing
risk has yet to be fully explored. Evidence also implicates
pesticides, delayed childbearing, the use of birth control
pills and hormone replacement therapy in the onset of
breast cancer.
[End]
- Date: Thu, 3 Aug 1995 07:15:27 EST
- A1-type: DOCUMENT
- Importance: normal
RFC-822-headers:
Received: from pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us by EPIC66.DEP.STATE.FL.US
(PMDF V4.3-7 #7204) id <01HTLPBTGUQ80005R9@EPIC66.DEP.STATE.FL.US>; Wed,
2 Aug 1995 15:30:45 EST
Received: by pbfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA00232; Wed,
2 Aug 95 15:27:12 EDT
X-Envelope-to: meeds_c@wpb1.dep.state.fl.us