瑞典斯德哥尔摩卡罗林斯卡医学院的研究发现，消瘦的女孩日后更有可能患上乳癌。与小时候较胖的女孩相比，7岁时身材较瘦的女孩长大后患乳癌的风险更大。科学家还发现，小时候稍胖的女孩患难以攻克的肿瘤的概率较小。
该研究报告发表在《乳癌研究》（Breast Cancer Research）杂志上，研究为把童年时旧照片作为评估女性乳癌风险的方法铺平了道路。瑞典科学家对6000名女性进行了研究，其中半数女性为乳癌患者，科学家依据她们7岁时体型“消瘦”、“中等”或“较胖”分为三组。判断基础为这些女性的旧照片和她们的记忆。研究人员惊讶地发现，小时候较胖的女性绝经期患乳癌的风险较小。之前的研究显示，肥胖的女性更易患乳癌，而且她们死于乳癌的风险高达50%。
科学家不确定瘦女孩易患乳癌的原因是什么。他们表示，新发现可能对判断女性乳癌风险具有重要意义。负责这项研究的李景梅(音译)说：“小时候较胖的女孩患乳癌的风险较低，这似乎违反直觉，因为新生儿体重较重和成年人体质指数较高已显示会增加乳癌风险。促成这种保护效果的机制仍是未知数。鉴于存在的这些联系和旧照片中儿童体型透露的信息，儿童的胖瘦对构建乳癌风险或者预后模式有着潜在的用途。”（生物谷Bioon.com）
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生物谷推荐原文出处：
Breast Cancer Research 2010, 12:R23 | doi:10.1186/bcr2564
Effects of childhood body size on breast cancer tumour characteristics
Jingmei Li , Keith Humphreys , Louise Eriksson , Kamila Czene , Jianjun Liu and Per Hall
Introduction
Although a role of childhood body size in postmenopausal breast cancer risk has been established, less is known about its influence on tumour characteristics.
Methods
We studied the relationships between childhood body size and tumour characteristics in a Swedish population-based case-control study consisting of 2,818 breast cancer cases and 3,111 controls. Our classification of childhood body size was derived from a nine-level somatotype. Relative risks were estimated by odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals, derived from fitting unconditional logistic regression models. Association between somatotype at age 7 and tumour characteristics were evaluated in a case-only analysis where P-values for heterogeneity were obtained by performing one degree of freedom trend tests.
Results
A large somatotype at age 7 was found to be associated with decreased postmenopausal breast cancer risk. Although strongly associated with other risk factors such as age of menarche, adult body mass index and mammographic density, somatotype at age 7 remained a significant protective factor (odds ratio (OR) comparing large to lean somatotype at age 7 = 0.73, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.58-0.91, P trend = 0.004) after adjustment. The significant protective effect was observed within all subgroups defined by estrogen receptor (ER) and progesterone receptor (PR) status, with a stronger effect for ER-negative (0.40, 95% CI = 0.21-0.75, P trend = 0.002), than for ER-positive (0.80, 95% CI = 0.62-1.05, P trend = 0.062), tumours (P heterogeneity = 0.046). Somatotype at age 7 was not associated with tumour size, histology, grade or the presence or absence of metastatic nodes.
Conclusions
Greater body size at age 7 is associated with a decreased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, and the associated protective effect is stronger for the ER-negative breast cancer subtype than for the ER-positive subtype.
