Cancer, Cancer Treatment

Women who confront with migraines stand less chance of developing breast cancer, according to researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

This correlation may be related to estrogen, a hormone produced in both men and women. The explanation goes like that: high levels of estrogen are linked to an augmented risk of breast cancer, and women who experience migraines are said to have low levels of the sex hormone. So these women have a lower risk of developing breast cancer. More precisely, the risk is 30 percent lower, researchers say.

Dr. Christopher Li and colleagues looked at two different studies conducted in the past. Of 3,412 post-menopausal women living in the Seattle area, 1,938 were diagnosed with breast cancer. The rest of them had no history of the disease, said the report, which appeared in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Migraines are often caused by declining estrogen levels before or during menses and stop during pregnancy when there is a high level of estrogen.

Nonetheless, there are voices claiming that what the report disclosed has no clinical implications. According to Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, there is indeed a reduced risk for women suffering from migraines to develop breast cancer, but in practical implications - what should a woman do differently - there is no action a woman or her health-care professional would take as a result of this report.”

Since using self-reported migraine data isnt enough to establish if the women actually experienced migraine, the studys results are not relevant; at least this is what migraine expert Dr. Stephen Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia maintains.

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