'Simple and Easy to Understand Message': Association of skirt size and postmenopausal breast cancer risk in older women: a cohort study within the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS)

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Not only was there an increased risk of breast cancer with increasing skirt size, but there was a reduced risk of breast cancer with a reduction in waist size.

Main

Fourkala E-O, Burnell M et al. BMJ Open 2014; 4: e005400. 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-005400

It has been reported that patients are comfortable for dentists to screen for medical conditions including risk factors for medical diseases, such as obesity. The investigators in this study, published in BMJ Open, recruited 92,834 postmenopausal women and followed them for a median time of 3.19 years. They found that if skirt size increased one unit (for example, UK SS 12–14) every 10 years between 25 years old and menopause, there was a 33% increased risk of developing breast cancer after the menopause. The subjects, all recruited over the age of 50 years old, were asked their present waist size and to remember what their skirt size was in their twenties. Of note, the predictive risk calculated from change in skirt size (proxy for central obesity) was found to be independent of BMI. The risk of developing breast cancer in this cohort of postmenopausal women was small (1.2%).