Environmental factors and breast cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women in the world. Although, certain risk factors for breast cancer, such as age at menarch, diet and genetic predisposition have been well known for years, many breast cancer cases occur in women with no known risk factors for disease. Today, some of the environmental factors such as environmental estrogens have been connected to breast cancer incidence which increase the rate of 16α-hydroxyestrone (bad estrogen) to 2-hydroxyestrone (good estrogen) in cancerous cells. In comparison to environmental estrogen, phytoestrogen decrease the risk of breast cancer. In this article some of the effective environmental factors in breast cancer incidence and their comparison to phytoestrogens as one of the inhibiting factors are described. © Global Science Publications.