Pregnancy isn’t linked to breast cancer recurrence, new study finds

Because pregnancy raises hormone levels, breast cancer survivors have long grappled with the fear that trying to become a mother could increase the chance of cancer recurrence.

“Oncologists have always told women with invasive cancer to wait at least five years before becoming pregnant and that, even then, it was a bad idea,” says Dr. Melvin J. Silverstein, medical director of the Lee Breast Center at USC.

A new study finds that’s not the case. Researchers from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston studied 383 patients, 35 and younger, who had undergone chemotherapy, including 47 women who became pregnant. Risk of recurrence was 25% among women who conceived; 54% among those who didn’t conceive. Nearly a quarter of the 205,000 breast cancers diagnosed each year occur in women of childbearing age. Half remain fertile after chemotherapy.

The authors, led by Dr. L. Johnetta Blakely, said the figures may reflect that women seeking to become pregnant tend to be healthier overall. Those who had a post-pregnancy recurrence tended to have earlier-stage disease and less cancer spread to the lymph nodes.

The study will appear in the Feb. 1 issue of Cancer, the journal of the American Cancer Society. It was released online Dec. 15.

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Jane E. Allen