The research was based on the Black Women’s Health Study, which has followed 59,000 African American women since 1995. The study authors analyzed medical information on 457 of the women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer as well as 318 women who developed hormone receptor-negative breast cancer.
In contrast, higher birth rates decreased the women’s risk for estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer, the study found. For those women, researchers found no link between breast-feeding and their risk for the disease.
“The adverse effect of high childbirth without subsequent breast-feeding seems to be confined to the hormone receptor-negative breast cancer, which carries a higher mortality rate and is more common in African Americans,” concluded Palmer.
Blacks At Higher Risk For Resistant Breast Cancer was originally published on blackdoctor.org
