Being tall entails increased breast cancer risk for young women

Greater body height appears to be associated with increased breast cancer risk among young women in Korea, as suggested in a study.

For the study, researchers looked at premenopausal women aged <40 years who were enrolled in the Kangbuk Samsung Health Study (KSHS) and National Health Insurance Service-National Health Information Database (NHIS-NHID).

Researchers performed anthropometry, including height measurements, and followed all participants for the incidence of breast cancer.

The mean age of the participants was 33.3 years in the KSHS cohort and 32.9 years in the NHIS-NHID cohorts. Cox regression and restricted cubic-spline regression models showed that every 10 cm of height was associated with a 44-percent increase in the risk of incident breast cancer (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.44, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.17–1.78) in the KSHS cohort.

The restricted cubic spline regression analysis showed that the association between height and breast cancer risk was almost linear. Relative to women with height of <155 cm, the risk of breast cancer increased progressively (p=0.009) among women with height of 160–165 cm (aHR, 1.67, 95 percent CI, 1.07–2.60), 165–170 cm (aHR, 1.75, 95 percent CI, 1.09–2.81), and ≥170 cm (aHR, 2.31, 95 percent CI, 1.18–3.86).

Results were consistent in the NHIS-NHID cohort (per 10-cm increase in height: aHR, 1.20, 95 percent CI, 1.10–1.31).