Study suggests link between stress and breast cancer

The attempt to link stress to breast cancer has been controversial. Some experts have said it blames women for their disease, and studies in which women with cancer were compared with healthy women have had conflicting results.

Now, one of the few long-term studies suggests an association between the disease and stress. After following more than 1,000 women for 24 years, Swedish researchers found that those who had significant stress in the five years before the study had twice the rate of developing breast cancer as women who didn’t.

In 1968, researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy in Goteborg, Sweden, examined 1,462 women, age 38 to 60, and asked them whether they had felt stressed for a month or longer and if those feelings included tension, fear, anxiety or sleep problems.

Of the 1,350 who completed the study, 456 reported having experienced significant stress. Twenty-four of those developed breast cancer. Of the 894 who said they had not experienced serious stress, 23 developed breast cancer.

The study was presented Sept. 24 at the European Cancer Conference in Copenhagen.

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-- Dianne Partie Lange