Psychosocial Stress a Factor in Breast Cancer

Psychosocial stressors, in the form of fear, anxiety and isolation, have been linked to breast cancer, increasing the aggressiveness at which tumors progress.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that breast cancer patients with the highest levels of stress had the most aggressive tumors. Stress plays a role in the autonomic nervous system, which is a contributing factor in regulating heart rate, blood pressure, muscles and glands.

The study consisted of 989 women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the preceding three months. The conducted survey to assess their stress levels and found that those women with higher stress levels had a increased incidence of aggressive breast cancer. They were also 38 percent more likely to have estrogen-receptor negative tumors, which do not respond as well to drug therapies such as Tamoxifen.

“It’s not clear what’s driving this association,” lead researcher Garth Rauscher said in a statement. “It may be that the level of stress in these patients’ lives influenced tumor aggressiveness. It may be that being diagnosed with a more aggressive tumor, with a more worrisome diagnosis and more stressful treatments, influenced reports of stress. It may be that both of these are playing a role in the association. We don’t know the answer to that question.”

Black and Latina women in the study exhibited higher stress scores, meaning a higher level of aggressive tumors. Racial disparity in women diagnosed with breast cancer is nothing new. A study published in July in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that black women are more likely to die from breast cancer than whites. While as a group black women in the U.S. tend to be heavier than whites, researchers were unable to find a link between survival rates and obesity. It has been theorized that differences in tumor biology and health care access could be at play.

Psychosocial stress and breast cancer: the inter-relationship between stress events, coping strategies and personality

This quasi-prospective study of 2163 women attending a breast-screening clinic for a routine medical check-up indicates that certain types of coping strategies and personality dispositions predispose some women to an increased risk of developing breast cancer following the occurrence of a major life-event such as bereavement or other loss-related event. Regular exposure to stress situations appears to reduce the risk of a malignancy; experiencing a single, major life event was found to be potentially much more damaging, particularly if the individual was unable to externalize her emotions and obtain appropriate help and counselling.

Cary L. Cooper and E. Brian Faragher

University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology; and the Department of Medical Statistics, University Hospital of South Manchester (Withington), Manchester