Overactive thyroid gland increases the risk of breast cancer says a recent study

Emobileclinic Researcher’s corner 

 

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Overactive thyroid gland has been linked to increase in breast cancer. According to the research, women with hyperthyroidism have 11% risk of being affected by breast cancer. The researchers also noticed that women who have hypothyroidism (abnormal low level of thyroid hormone) were not affected in the studies. The author of the research noticed 6% reduced chances of being affected with breast cancer when affected with hypothyroidism. 

The researchers did a 36 years review of Danish women in some cohorts and obtained 80,000 overactive Thyroid cases and 61,000 underactive thyroid cases before he was able to come to this conclusion. These women had no cancer as at the beginning of the study between the period of 1978-2013. The incidence on breast cancer was monitored for 5-7 years. 




The  lead researcher Dr. Jens Otto Lunde Jorgensen further explains that their research was to further support previous work done in that regard and said he was not surprised with the results  as ‘thyroid hormones  may contribute to development of breast cancer and the treatment of overactive thyroid disease increases the risk of breast cancer. These are all possibilities, but the bottom line is that we do not know for sure” what is majorly responsible for this.’

A previous research as noticed that female are more likely affected with overactive thyroid than male and says about 51 out of 100,000 people are affected yearly. The importance of thyroid can’t be over stressed as it ‘helps to regulate a variety of functions by constantly releasing a steady stream of hormones into the bloodstream.’ Thyroid is a key hormonal gland that plays a major role in the metabolism, growth and maturation of the human body.’ 

Commenting on the result of the research, a breast surgeon feels the result cant be generalized as ethnic variation is an important factor and the research was made up of various women coming from different ethnicity background and thus ‘findings might not be generalizable across other population’ She insists that what affects women in a country might not affect women in another country. 




Dr. Courtney Vito, a breast surgeon and an assistant clinical professor of surgical oncology at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte,says  “there were also plenty of flaws in the study design,” She observes that “high thyroid levels were only shown to have estrogen-like properties in a test tube, not in actual people. ‘She also noticed that family history on breast cancer was not taken into consideration as that would have influence the outcome, however she agrees that the results prove that breast cancer is hormonally driven and urges more research in that regard.

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Source

Health Day News

 

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