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. 2017 Nov 22;19(1):118.
doi: 10.1186/s13058-017-0908-4.

Smoking and risk of breast cancer in the Generations Study cohort

Michael E Jones  1 , Minouk J Schoemaker  2 , Lauren B Wright  2 , Alan Ashworth  3   4   5   6 , Anthony J Swerdlow  2   3
Affiliations

Smoking and risk of breast cancer in the Generations Study cohort

Michael E Jones et al. Breast Cancer Res. .

Abstract

Background: Plausible biological reasons exist regarding why smoking could affect breast cancer risk, but epidemiological evidence is inconsistent.

Methods: We used serial questionnaire information from the Generations Study cohort (United Kingdom) to estimate HRs for breast cancer in relation to smoking adjusted for potentially confounding factors, including alcohol intake.

Results: Among 102,927 women recruited 2003-2013, with an average of 7.7 years of follow-up, 1815 developed invasive breast cancer. The HR (reference group was never smokers) was 1.14 (95% CI 1.03-1.25; P = 0.010) for ever smokers, 1.24 (95% CI 1.08-1.43; P = 0.002) for starting smoking at ages < 17 years, and 1.23 (1.07-1.41; P = 0.004) for starting smoking 1-4 years after menarche. Breast cancer risk was not statistically associated with interval from initiation of smoking to first birth (P-trend = 0.97). Women with a family history of breast cancer (ever smoker vs never smoker HR 1.35; 95% CI 1.12-1.62; P = 0.002) had a significantly larger HR in relation to ever smokers (P for interaction = 0.039) than women without (ever smoker vs never smoker HR 1.07; 95% CI 0.96-1.20; P = 0.22). The interaction was prominent for age at starting smoking (P = 0.003) and starting smoking relative to age at menarche (P = 0.0001).

Conclusions: Smoking was associated with a modest but significantly increased risk of breast cancer, particularly among women who started smoking at adolescent or peri-menarcheal ages. The relative risk of breast cancer associated with smoking was greater for women with a family history of the disease.

Keywords: Breast neoplasms; Cohort studies; Smoking.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the South Thames Multicentre Research Ethics Committee (reference MREC 03/01/014), and participants provided informed consent.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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