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. 2020 Apr 6:2020:5931529.
doi: 10.1155/2020/5931529. eCollection 2020.

Reproductive Risk Factors Associated with Breast Cancer Molecular Subtypes among Young Women in Northern China

Jian Ming Wang  1   2 , Jun Wang  1 , Hong Guang Zhao  2 , Tong Tong Liu  2 , Fei Yang Wang  2
Affiliations

Reproductive Risk Factors Associated with Breast Cancer Molecular Subtypes among Young Women in Northern China

Jian Ming Wang et al. Biomed Res Int. .

Abstract

Purpose: Accumulated evidence suggests that reproductive factors are related to different breast cancer subtypes, but most studies on these relationships are mainly focused on middle-aged and older patients, and it remains unclear how reproductive factors impact different subtypes of breast cancer in young women.

Methods: We assessed the relationships between fertility factors and luminal A, luminal B, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-enriched, and triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) subtypes in 3792 patients and 4182 controls aged 20-70 years. Data on the reproductive history of the study participants were acquired through face-to-face interviews and questionnaires. We conducted case-control comparisons among tumor subtypes based on estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and HER2 statuses using unconditional polychotomous multivariate logistic regression models to compute odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).

Results: Parity was inversely related to both luminal A and luminal B subtypes in young women and older women (all P trend < 0.05). Later age at first full-term birth was inversely related to the luminal A subtype (P trend < 0.05) in young women but correlated with an increased risk of the luminal A subtype (P trend < 0.05) in older women. Parous Chinese women 40 years old or younger who breastfed for 12 months or longer had a lower risk of luminal B and TNBC subtypes than women who never breastfed (OR = 0.55, 95% CI 0.36-0.84 and OR = 0.52, 95% CI 0.28-0.99, respectively).

Conclusions: Our results implied that parity exerted a strong protective effect against luminal A and luminal B subtype breast cancer in young Chinese women, and long-term breastfeeding obviously decreased the risk of luminal B and TNBC subtypes in this population.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors confirm that they have no conflicts of interest.

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