Exercise and weight loss identified as key to lowering breast cancer rates

Published on Sunday 19 September 2010 15:44

Thousands of cases of breast cancer could be prevented in future if women take action to exercise more and lose weight, according to an expert leading a major study into the disease.

Professor Tony Swerdlow, head of the mammoth Breakthrough Generations Study of 100,000 women, said changing behaviour was likely to have the biggest impact on halting rising rates of breast cancer in the western world.

His comments came ahead of an event in Edinburgh tomorrow, hosted by First Minister Alex Salmond, to mark the progress of the ground-breaking 40-year study and also to highlight Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October.

More than 45,000 cases of breast cancer - 4,000 in Scotland - are diagnosed each year in the UK, with rates rising by 50 per cent in the last 25 years.

Mr Swerdlow, who will speak at the event at Edinburgh Castle, said the aim of the Generations study was to find out the exact causes of breast cancer and to be able to offer detailed advice about women could do to reduce their risk.

Being overweight and not taking exercise are believed to increase the chances of someone developing the disease.

But experts currently lack the knowledge of how much weight someone would have to lose, and at what age, and how much exercise they would have to take to have a significant impact of their risk of breast cancer.

Mr Swerdlow said by following the 100,000 women - 7,000 in Scotland - throughout their lives, they hoped to get an accurate picture of how different factors affected their risk at different times.

Factors such as childbirth, and its effects on hormone levels, are known to reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Mr Swerdlow said while it was unlikely women would change their plans to have a family or not simply to cut their risk of breast cancer, treatments were being investigated to mimic the hormonal effects of pregnancy.

But he said making changes to lifestyle were probably a simpler way of reducing the chances of getting breast cancer.

He added: "What we would like to get more detail about is how much exercise - can you just walk to the bus stop or run a marathon?"

Mr Swerdlow said he also expected to be able to tell women that losing weight, particularly after the menopause, would reduce their risk also.But he said they had to show that the damage done by being overweight, and its effect on hormones, was reversible by dieting.

The researcher, based at London's Institute of Cancer Research, said he was confident that lifestyle, rather than genetic factors, would have the biggest impact on breast cancer risk.

Mr Swerdlow said he was confident that people would heed the advice they were eventually able to produce to reduce their risk of breast cancer, and if they did then potentially thousands of cases could be prevented.

He added: "If you look back 50 years, Richard Doll showed smoking caused lung cancer.

"Initially not even doctors believed him.

"It took time to convince doctors and then the public, but what is true percolates through and people act on it."

Audrey Birt, director for Scotland at charity Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "We hope that the information collected will lead to significant leaps forward in our knowledge."