Relative Weight, Height, and Risk of Breast Cancer
- Demetrius Albanes, MD;
- Charles Brown, PhD
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
Excerpt
In their recent study, London et al1 report decreased relative risks for premenopausal breast cancer among women of higher body mass index (BMI) compared with leaner women. Body mass index was found not to be related to the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. The authors state: "Our findings suggest that adult adipose tissue is related to reduced risk of premenopausal breast cancer and does not increase appreciably breast cancer risk among younger postmenopausal women." This conclusion may be unwarrant
ed, however, because of the potential bias introduced by the use of Quetelet's BMI (weight in kilograms divided by the second power of height in meters), which has been found to be inversely correlated with height,2 and because height is associated positively with breast cancer risk in this and other3 studies.
Study.— We examined this BMI-height association for 4883 women aged 30 to 60 years
