Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2012;7(12):e51446.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051446. Epub 2012 Dec 7.

Effect of body mass index on breast cancer during premenopausal and postmenopausal periods: a meta-analysis

Zahra Cheraghi  1 , Jalal Poorolajal, Tahereh Hashem, Nader Esmailnasab, Amin Doosti Irani
Affiliations
Review

Effect of body mass index on breast cancer during premenopausal and postmenopausal periods: a meta-analysis

Zahra Cheraghi et al. PLoS One. 2012.

Abstract

Objective: There is no universal consensus on the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and breast cancer. This meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the overall effect of overweight and obesity on breast cancer risk during pre- and post-menopausal period.

Data sources: All major electronic databases were searched until April 2012 including Web of Knowledge, Medline, Scopus, and ScienceDirect. Furthermore, the reference lists and related scientific conference databases were searched.

Review methods: All prospective cohort and case-control studies investigating the association between BMI and breast cancer were retrieved irrespective of publication date and language. Women were assessed irrespective of age, race and marital status. The exposure of interest was BMI. The primary outcome of interest was all kinds of breast cancers confirmed pathologically. Study quality was assessed using the checklist of STROBE. Study selection and data extraction were performed by two authors separately. The effect measure of choice was risk ratio (RR(i)) and rate ratio (RR(a)) for cohort studies and odds ratio (OR) in case-control studies.

Results: Of 9163 retrieved studies, 50 studies were included in meta-analysis including 15 cohort studies involving 2,104,203 subjects and 3,414,806 person-years and 35 case-control studies involving 71,216 subjects. There was an inverse but non-significant correlation between BMI and breast cancer risk during premenopausal period: OR = 0.93 (95% CI 0.86, 1.02); RR(i) = 0.97 (95% CI 0.82, 1.16); and RR(a) = 0.99 (95% CI 0.94, 1.05), but a direct and significant correlation during postmenopausal period: OR = 1.15 (95% CI 1.07, 1.24); RR(i) = 1.16 (95% CI 1.08, 1.25); and RR(a) = 0.98 (95% CI 0.88, 1.09).

Conclusion: The results of this meta-analysis showed that body mass index has no significant effect on the incidence of breast cancer during premenopausal period. On the other hand, overweight and obesity may have a minimal effect on breast cancer, although significant, but really small and not clinically so important.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Forest plot of odds ratio estimates of breast cancer in premenopausal period by overweight and obesity.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Forest plot of odds ratio estimates of breast cancer in postmenopausal period by overweight and obesity.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Forest plot of risk ratio estimates of breast cancer in premenopausal period by overweight and obesity.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Forest plot of risk ratio estimates of breast cancer in postmenopausal period by overweight and obesity.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Funnel plot of included studies in pre postmenopausal and postmenopausal period by study design.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. World Health Organization (2012) Breast cancer: prevention and control. WHO.
    1. World Health Organization (2006) Guidelines for management of breast cancer. Nasr: EMRO Technical Publications Series.
    1. van de Water W, Markopoulos C, van de Velde CJH, Seynaeve C, Hasenburg A, et al. (2012) Association between age at diagnosis and disease-specific mortality among postmenopausal women withHormone receptor–positive breast cancer. JAMA 307: 590–597. - PubMed
    1. Barlow WE, White E, Ballard-Barbash R, Vacek PM, Titus-Ernstoff L, et al. (2006) Prospective breast cancer risk prediction model for women undergoing screening mammography. J Natl Cancer Inst 98. - PubMed
    1. Sonnenschein E, Toniolo P, Terry MB, Bruning PF, Kato I, et al. (1999) Body fat distribution and obesity in pre- and postmenopausal breast cancer. Int J Epidemiol 28: 1026–1031. - PubMed