What is it about?
It has been known for many years that pregnancy is linked to risk of breast cancer in mothers. But the relationship is complicated because while pregnancy is linked to higher risk within the first 2 decades after pregnancy, pregnancy is also linked to reduced risk in the long-term. Estrogens are greatly increased in pregnancy, but not all types of estrogens are the same. Here we present the first evidence that one type of estrogen, found in greatest abundance during pregnancy, called estriol, may help protect women from breast cancer. This might explain why estriol is so abundant in human pregnancy.
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Why is it important?
Our findings could lead to a strategy to protect women from breast cancer. This would depend on whether our findings can be corroborated in further studies and whether laboratory studies can discover how estriol works to protect pregnant women from breast cancer.
Perspectives
I greatly enjoyed this research and feel personally fulfilled by its publication. Ever since I was in graduate school, 40 years ago, I had been looking for ways to learn how pregnancy could be related to the long term health of women. I believe that this understanding can someday lead to ways to use the natural protections built-in to ensure both healthy pregnancy and mother's survival, to protect the health of women. In addition, it was an honor to work with my co-authors, P. Cirillo, my colleague for over 30 years , and B. Hopper and P. Siiteri who were willing to take the creative leap in collaborating on this study. Our work together developed a new hypothesis about why humans make so much estriol in pregnancy. I hope that this article will reach people interested in how pregnancy evolved in humans and people who are searching for ways to prevent breast cancer.
Barbara A Cohn
Child Health and Devlelopment Studies, Public Health Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Third Trimester Estrogens and Maternal Breast Cancer: Prospective Evidence, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, July 2017, Endocrine Society,
DOI: 10.1210/jc.2016-3476.
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