Refining the focus on early life and adolescent pathways to prevent breast cancer
Menée à partir de l'analyse de 835 échantillons tumoraux et de 663 échantillons de tissus adjacents normaux provenant de patientes atteintes d'un cancer du sein et incluses dans les cohortes "Nurses’ Health Studies", cette étude analyse, en fonction du statut des récepteurs aux estrogènes, la corrélation entre le niveau d'adiposité corporelle à l'adolescence (âge : entre 10 et 20 ans) et l'expression de plusieurs ensembles de gènes au niveau de la tumeur et des tissus adjacents
Studies have consistently demonstrated that early-life adiposity is inversely related to pre-and postmenopausal breast cancer independent of adult weight gain. Early-lifeperiod, particularly pubertal/early adult,representsone of thecritical “windows of susceptibility” to breast cancer, when mammary epithelial cells proliferate exponentiallybut remain incompletely differentiatedmaking themsusceptible to various exposures. Early-life adiposity may impact growth in height and female reproductive organ maturationas reflected inlower height growth velocity andearlier age at menarche, but does not impact final attained height, and is potentially related to other intermediate markers of breast cancer risk such as benign breastdisease, mammographic breast densityand breast tissue features. Mechanisms for the inverse association identified to date include alterations in clonal pools, endogenous hormone,and insulin growth factor1levels across pre-and postmenopausal years, as well asmammographic breast density.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute , éditorial en libre accès, 2019