Thursday October 16, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- In the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, you may do something to help yourselves reduce the risk of breast cancer.   But first, equip yourselves with current knowledge about how to prevent the disease.

We have published quite a few articles on breast cancer prevention because it is better for women to prevent the disease from developing in the first place than to get treated after contracting the disease.

It is well known that the conventional treatments are harmful and ineffective, leaving a large percentage of patients dying in the first five years after diagnosis.   But few people know that these therapies can ironically increase risk of breast cancer.

A new study showed that both radiotherapy and chemotherapy could pose a danger to certain women with breast cancer and suggested that caution needs to be excised when certain radiotherapy is considered for younger women.

The stud led by Hooning MJ and colleagues from the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Daniel den Hoed Cancer Center in the Netherlands and The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in the US was meant to determine whether or not modern radiotherapy and chemotherapy affect the risk of contralateral breast cancer.

Hooning MJ and colleagues followed 7,221 younger women with breast cancer and found that risk from radiation therapy increased with decreasing age at first treatment.  

Women receiving the treatment at an age younger than 35 years were 78 percent more likely to get contralateral breast cancer while those receiving radiation therapy at age 45 or older were 9 percent more likely to get the cancer, the study found.

It was also found that women treated before age 45 years with postlumpectomy faced a 1.5-fold increased risk of contralateral breast cancer compared with those who had postmasterctomy radiotherapy.

Postmastectomy radiotherapy used direct electron field while postlumpectomy radiotherapy used tangential fields.  

Postlumpectomy radiotherapy posed even a greater risk in women with strong family history for breast cancer. The risk was 2.5 times higher in these women than expected.

Chemotherapy using cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and fluorouracil was not associated with risk for contralateral breast cancer in the first five years of follow-up, but the risk increased after the five years.

The researchers urged caution when considering breast radiation with tangential fields for young patients with breast cancer.

The study was published in the Oct 14 2008 issue of Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Breast cancer, although largely preventable, strikes about 185,000 women and kills 45,000 each year in the United States.

In this month of each year, the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month campaign organizer and its sponsors encourage women and even men to get screened for breast cancer so that once found the disease can be treated early and patients would have better odds of survival.   But they would never tell you how to prevent the disease.

Remember once again, breast cancer is basically a preventable disease and you can do something to prevent it.   Wearing pink, talking pink or doing whatever pink even donations won't help you much. The federal government has been spending lots of your money on cancer research, mostly on disease and treatment. Not much on cancer prevention.