Posted on 12/15/2006 10:36:20 AM PST by FLOutdoorsman
Breast cancer could be sexually transmitted, says a researcher who has found the same virus that causes cervical cancer in breast cancer tumours from Australian women.
Emeritus Professor James Lawson of the University of New South Wales and colleagues have found the same form of the human papillomavirus (HPV) associated with cervical cancer in almost half the breast tumour samples they tested.
It's the first study of its kind in Australia, although international studies have also found cervical cancer-related HPV in breast cancer cells.
He says while the evidence is far from conclusive, "it's possible and totally worthy of investigation" to suspect that HPV could also cause breast cancer.
Lawson says it's possible that HPV is spread by sexual activity or during showers or baths, when the virus could be transferred from the genital area to the breasts via the nipple ducts.
"We know that the virus explodes out of the cell and is spread by touch, so it's fairly obvious that it could be spread by sexual activity to the breast, you could also argue that it would be spread by washing and bathing," he says.
Lawson says more research is needed to establish whether HPV is actually causing the breast cancer or if women with breast cancer are more prone to infection with the virus.
Younger women
Lawson and colleagues last year published the results of a DNA analysis which found 24 out of 50 breast cancer samples also tested positive to HPV 18, the same form of the virus implicated in breast cancer.
A subsequent review, published in the journal Future Microbiology in June this year, found various forms of high-risk HPV had been identified in 10 separate breast cancer studies since 1999.
In a letter published online in the British Journal of Cancer last month Lawson reports that a review of the 2005 study found women with HPV positive breast cancers were on average about eight years younger than those whose tumours did not test positive to the virus.
He says this lends weight to the sexual transmission theory, because HPV is more common in younger women who are more likely than older women to have had multiple sexual partners, something he describes as a "post-pill phenomenon".
Lawson says it isn't the first time a virus has been associated with breast cancer.
The mouse mammary tumour virus, which causes breast cancer in mice, has been known about since the 1930s, and in a 2004 study Lawson reported finding a genetically similar version of the virus in Australian women.
Lawson says if it's true that HPV can cause breast cancer as well cervical cancer, the introduction of the cervical cancer vaccine, developed by Australian of the Year Professor Ian Frazer, should also cut rates of breast cancer.
He says he is currently pushing for a study into this.
"The real proof of all this will be the vaccine, but you'll have to wait [a long time] for [the results]," he says.
"It makes sense to follow that group of girls, and when some of them get breast cancer, to see if any of them are HPV positive breast cancers.
"Theoretically the answer should be no."
Doubts
But chief executive officer of Cancer Council Australia, Professor Ian Olver, says while it's possible that a virus could cause breast cancer the existing studies are small and inconclusive.
"What we've got is small studies that have found an association between HPV and breast cancer ... but they haven't shown anything that could say it's causal," he says.
"I think you need much bigger studies and a mechanism by which HPV was implicated in the development."
A recent article published online ahead of appearing in the journal The Breast failed to find evidence of HPV in a study of 81 Swiss women.
"Our analysis could not support a role of HPV in breast carcinoma," the study concludes.
But hey, there are no consequences to promiscuity, or so the democrat party's media endlessly repeats.
Or homosexual sex.
Lesbians and nuns have high rates of ovarian, breast and uterine cancer due to their not having children. San Francisco has the highest rate of breast cancer in the USA and the lowest birthrate. White career women also have a high rate of breast cancer.
Having children is a good way to reduce cancer of the reproductive organs and breasts.
From what I understand, risks of both types of cancers are greatly reduced by childbearing and nursing, both of which are activities that few nuns engage in. Even the Komen Foundation (despite their ties to Planned Parenthood-don't even get me started on that!) agrees that childbearing and nursing help reduce the risk of breast cancer (though there is, of course, NO link between abortion or the pill and breast cancer! None at all! /s).
Many cancers migrate in the body, once they take hold.
The researchers did not say if they also found that the precursors for cervical cancer were present as well.
If they did, then it is just as likely, until there is further study, that the virus followed with and within the cancer producing cells that may have migrated from the cervix to the breast tissue.
If that is found to be true, and cervical cancer cells, with or without the presence of the HPVirus, do migrate to breast tissue, then the "cause", vis-a-vis breast cancer, would be the cancer itself, beginning in the cervix and not the HPVirus.
I don't think abortion increases cancer it's just that childlessness increases cancer -- and the typical woman who gets an abortion (white, some college education and from a middle income background) tends not to have as many kids as nature intended.
Do you have a source on that?
The major cause for the sudden decline seems to be tied to the news on hormone replacement therapy, and the sudden decline in menopausal women using the hormones.
"Having children is a good way to reduce cancer of the reproductive organs and breasts."
***
Good thinking. I don't have children -- maybe I should go out and have a bunch, then go on welfare -- all so I can prevent breast cancer.
*snicker*
I read that theory yesterday, and it makes no sense. If hormone therapy shrinks the size of tumors and the tumors then go undetected, it would seem that eliminating hormone therapy would cause the tumors to stay the same size or grow and MORE breast cancer would be detected. Or did I misread? I don't know if I read about this on FR or via drudge.
This refers to HRT (hormone replacement therapy) which women have traditionally taken during menopause to mitigate some of the discomfort factors like hot flashes. Since HRT keeps estrogen levels high, studies in 2001-2002 showed that it was a driver in breast cancer and women, with the urging of their doctors, began to drop HRT in droves. I know I won't even consider HRT, for that reason.
Sounds to me like an excuse for more funding of HPV vaccines.
"Lawson says it's possible that HPV is spread by sexual activity or during showers or baths, when the virus could be transferred from the genital area to the breasts via the nipple ducts."
I'm getting an image of a woman with remarkable folding skills...
In a startling turnaround, breast cancer rates in the United States dropped dramatically in 2003, and experts said they believe it is because many women stopped taking hormone pills.
The 7.2 percent decline came a year after a big federal study linked menopause hormones to a higher risk of breast cancer, heart disease and other problems. Within months, millions of women stopped taking estrogen and progestin pills.
A new analysis of federal cancer statistics, presented Thursday at a breast cancer conference in Texas, revealed the drop in tumors.
About 200,000 cases of breast cancer had been expected in 2003; the drop means that about 14,000 fewer women actually were diagnosed with the disease.
Because breast cancer takes years to form, experts think the hormones mostly caused small tumors that had been growing to stop or shrink, making them no longer detectable on mammograms. Whether this is true or will result in fewer cases over the long run will take more time to tell.
The next set of cancer statistics is due out in April.
I see what you mean. Which reminds me, I need to make an appointment for one of those torture sessions - I mean, mammograms. :-\
Correlation does not prove causation. My pet theory is that there was a time a few decades back when breast feeding became less popular, especially in the Northeast, For the past decade or so, these bottle feeders have been reaching the age where this cancer is more common. Relatively speaking, breast feeding has only in the last decade or so become more popular again and these women are now reaching the age of higher risk. This would also explain why breast cancer was never so common down south as in the northeast, since us poor southern women kept up that silly backwards habit of breastfeeding, even while 'sophisticated' northern women were bottle feeding.
Pearl necklaces hit hardest.
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