Science / Medicine : Smoking and Breast Disease

Cigarette smoking appears to protect women against non-cancerous breast disease, but the adverse effects of smoking on overall health still far outweigh any benefits, researchers said last week.

“The adverse effects of smoking far outweigh the (beneficial) effects, such as the possible lowering of the risk of some types of benign breast disease,” researchers affiliated with Harvard University wrote in a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Previous research has suggested smoking can inhibit the female hormone estrogen, which may be associated with the growth of cysts and other non-cancerous tissue in the breast. To examine this, the researchers studied 5,398 women ages 21 to 80, comparing women who never smoked to those who were former smokers and those who currently smoked.

The researchers found that the smokers had about half the risk of developing benign breast disease compared to the nonsmokers.