Breast Cancer Treatment Is Less Effective Over Smokers

Overview

• Post By : Kumar Jeetendra


• Source: Lund University


• Date: 18 Jun,2016

We all know well that smoking badly affects our health and cause number of serious deadly disease even cancer too. The team of Swedish researcher now proved that victims of breast cancer with smoking in their habit could not be treated properly in compare to no smokers

The study is published in the British Journal of Cancer.

According to Researcher,

"Smokers who were treated with aromatase inhibitors had a three times higher risk of recurrence of breast cancer compared with the non-smokers who got the same treatment. The study also showed that the smokers also had an increased risk of dying, either from the breast cancer or from other illnesses, during the time we followed them," says Helena Jernström, associate professor and researcher who, together with trainee physician Mia Persson, is the principal investigator behind the study published in the British Journal of Cancer.

According to study source,

To raise out this valuable work successfully the team of researcher followed about 1.016 southern Sweden who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2002 and 2012 and after inquiry the victims asked for smokers or nonsmokers about one in five women ask either they are regular or social smokers.

"The treatment with aromatase inhibitors worked significantly better in the non-smoking patients. However, we saw little or no difference between smokers and non-smokers among patients treated with the drug tamoxifen, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. More studies are needed, but our findings are important as many breast cancer patients receive this type of treatment," says Helena Jernström.

"That was unexpected. Smoking is not health-promoting in any way, after all, so it is always beneficial to stop. But these findings show that patients who smoke need more support and encouragement to quit." says Helena Jernström.

Story source: Lund University

Journal References:

Mia Persson, Maria Simonsson, Andrea Markkula, Carsten Rose, Christian Ingvar, Helena Jernström. Impacts of smoking on the endocrine treatment response in a prospective breast cancer cohort. British Journal of Cancer, 2016; DOI: 10.1038/bjc.2016.174