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.
Actually men and women are equally susceptiple to HPV and yet penile cancer is extremely rare. It has been speculated that women who develop early stages of cervical cancer develop an immune deficiency which allows HPV to develop.
Would I suggest skipping the vaccine? No. Yet in the face of incontrovertible evidence demonstrating that HPV in some manner causes cervical cancer, I would remain skeptical at this time. As to breast cancer, it seems extremely unlikely. Any traces of HPV should be considered opportunistic.
OK, some people who actually understand that will give you a hard time about it, but I think it was funny. :)
Despicable spinning.
Which leads one to realize they don't know much and there undoubtedly are undiscovered causes out there. Same is true for many diseases, and it might just turn out they are communicable diseases.
Convent hot tubs?
I think the 7% reduction in breast cancer is because women STOPPED taking the horse urine the docs were prescribing for menopause....
I thought it was related to them not having and nursing babies.
So... if they did get this right, the formula for avoiding breast cancer should look a little like this:
1. Have one sex partner who has only had you as a sex partner.
2. Have 2 babies by the age of 25, nurse them for a year each.
3. Never take artificial hormones (including the pill)
4. Eat lots of greens.
Sounds like what grandma did.
HPV causes cervical cancer, doesn't it?
bump
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