Night shifts increases cancer risk

However, majority of the world’s population don’t comply by the information and smoke, regardless.

The research team notes that women with a family risk of breast cancer should seek jobs where working in shifts is not required.

Because of no proper sleep the women tend to develop these diseases.

Contributing lesser years to smoking were also associated to an elevated risk of mortality from breast cancer, however the additional risk due was so negligible that the researchers thought it might have been due to chance.

They also found that those who smoked were more inclined to develop advanced tumors and weigh less compared to the other category of women in the study.

With half of the women in the study followed for at least seven years, the researchers saw 170 deaths from all causes – including 132 deaths from breast cancer.

Dr Michael Hastings, from the UK’s Medical Research Council, told the BBC: “I consider this study to give the definitive experimental proof, in mouse models, that circadian [body clock] disruption can accelerate the development of breast cancer”.

“There are now quite a few studies suggesting that active smokers diagnosed with breast cancer have poorer survival – not to mention accumulating evidence that smokers may have a greater risk of developing breast cancer”, she notes.

One limitation of the study is its reliance on patients to accurately report information about their exposure to cigarettes, the researchers acknowledge in the journal Cancer Science. BRCA mutations affect the production of tumour-suppressing proteins, and the mutations account for about 5-10 percent of all breast cancers, according to the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Breast cancer is the most deadly type of cancer in women worldwide. This however brings in light the continued importance of making sure women control their tobacco intake if they are suffering from breast cancer and should be able to handle cancer comprehensively taking adequate measures. They further stress that the risk of this disease increases with age, from 1 in 227 at age 30 to 1 in 26 by age 70. A lack of sleep or irregular sleeping patterns have previously been linked to an increased risk of type-2 diabetes and obesity, as well as a higher occurrence of heart attacks.