Large breasts are every woman’s dream and every man’s fantasy. But, beauty can be dangerous. The latest study by the researchers working for the California biotechnology company 23andMe confirmed for the first time the link between the breast size and the risk of breast tumors.
What determines your breast size?
Large breast size is inheritable, but not always. It often happens that one daughter inherits this genetic treat from her mother and other does not. Larger weight also increases the breast size. The researchers identified seven unique genome variations that are responsible for the breast size, or at least ‘possible associated” with it.
Unfortunately, two of those genetic variations are also found to be linked to the higher risk of breast cancer. The larger the breasts, the higher the risk of breast tumors.
The study
The research team worked with the questionnaires completed by about 16,000 women of European origin. They analyzed the information on not only the breast size, but also age, ancestry, pregnancies, breast surgeries and breast feeding. The researchers then identified genome regions linked to the different breast development.
In the next step, the scientists analyzed 29 DNA variations linked to the higher risk of breast cancer, and compared them with region linked to the size of breasts.
While the strong link between the risk of breast cancer and large breast size was surprising, scientists did not consider their findings statistically significant to consider large breasts a big risk factor for breast cancer. Other factors, such as breast density and obesity play significant role as well. What the new findings might offer is a path to the development of an interesting new breast cancer screening tool.
