Breast Cancer Health Center

Does Stress Cause Breast Cancer?

Stress Ranks High Among Risk Factors continued...

Two leading cancer researchers who were asked by WebMD to comment on the study agreed.

"It's always a problem with how you define stress and whether you have a large enough study population. We're not seeing all the data we'd like to see: a larger study with clearer definitions of what is stress. But it's definitely a study worth pursuing, maybe finally putting a nail in the coffin is there a link to stress, yes or no," says Harry Storm, MD, director of Cancer Prevention and Documentation at the Danish Cancer Society, based in Copenhagen.

"This is something that's under intensive study now, and there are some indications that stress may play a role in some cancers like breast cancer," said Harry Vainio, MD, with the International Agency for Research in Cancer in Lyons, France. "But we need to see larger studies where the data can be broken down to give us a clearer idea of what's going on."

Storm adds that other studies have examined the exact same question and gotten strikingly different answers. He mentioned one study of women who had suffered the death of one of their children (an extremely stressful situation) where the researchers found that there was absolutely no relationship between stress and a later risk of breast cancer.