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Study links antibiotics, breast cancer.
18 Feb 2004
(CNN) -- Increased use of antibiotics may heighten women's risk of breast cancer, a study looking at possible connections between the two suggests.
Researchers found that women who took antibiotics for more than 500 days or who had more than 25 prescriptions in the course of a 17-year period more than doubled their risk of breast cancer compared with women who had not taken any antibiotics.
The fewer the days on antibiotics resulted in a smaller risk, the authors wrote in the study appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
"It's as strong as any of the risk factors that we know," said Dr. Roberta Ness of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, who is author of an editorial accompanying the study.
"To put it into perspective, the risk for developing breast cancer from hormone replacement use is about a 30 [percent] to 40 percent increase in risk. And here we're talking about a doubling in risk of those women who are using chronic antibiotics."
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