Depression increases risk of dying for women with breast cancer

The organization is now advocating that women who are at average risk for breast cancer start annual mammograms at age 45 and continue until age 54, then reduce screening frequency to once every two years.

The absolute increase in risk amounts to about 1 additional cancer in every 100 women who have a false positive mammogram over a 10-year period, she says.

About 180,000 of the mammograms were false positives, meaning that the test detected a tissue abnormality but an additional imaging or biopsy test did not support a cancer diagnosis and the women did not develop breast cancer in the year after the mammogram.

Louise Henderson, PhD at the University of North Carolina, said “Having a false positive is really a piece to the puzzle of breast cancer risk”.

Henderson says the study wasn’t created to figure out why a falsely positive mammogram is associated with an increased cancer risk.

“Some women who have a scare through a false positive actually are less likely to want to have mammograms because it was a scary experience”, Wender said. “I think we can now state with confidence that (it) is in fact a risk factor for developing breast cancer”, said Dr. Richard Wender, chief cancer control officer for the American Cancer Society.

The next step for research, Fazeli Dehkordy says, is to explore whether expanded coverage and more mammograms translate to better health outcomes with regard to breast cancer.

Wender agrees with Henderson that it would not make sense to recommend women with a history of a false positive mammogram get screened more often.

The study appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Lead researcher Elizabeth Davies said: ‘Low mood and depression are understandable reactions to a breast cancer diagnosis’.

Depression may decrease survival rates in breast cancer patients, according to a recent study.

Overall, 55% of all women with a record of depression were alive five years after their breast cancer diagnosis compared with 75% with no depression history.

Dr. Newman adds that breast cancer incidence increases with age; however, the breast cancer burden of young/premenopausal women generates substantial attention because of the associated impact on a population subset that assumes much of the nation’s family and general workforce responsibilities.

The women were divided into three groups: Those who had a negative result; those who had a false positive and were referred for additional tests (such as an MRI); and those who had a false-positive result and were sent for a biopsy. Her study was not able to explore why this may be the case.

In the United States, said Monticciolo, about 50 percent of women have breasts categorized as dense or very dense. This latter organization and others have stated these recommendations only add confusion to the issue of mammogram screening. The researchers found strong correlation between both age and adiposity with breast cancer.

WENDER: But if you’ve had a false positive, it’s even more important that a woman remain vigilant and their clinician and the entire health care system help her remain vigilant to be regularly screened.