F Ameri - Students Research Committee, Dept. of Food Technology Research, National Nutrition and Food Technology Research
H Davoodi - Research Institute, Faculty of Nutrition and Food Technology, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.

Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer and affects millions of women around the world. Obesity is an established risk factor for postmenopausal development of breast cancer. We searched PubMed for related publications using breast cancer , obesity , WHR , weight , height , body mass index , body fat distribution and menopause as keywords. We searched for paper that had been published between 2001 and 2015. About 200 papers were identified and after the elimination of papers that were relevant studies available for review were 31 related to the subject. Among premenopausal women, a number of epidemiological studies in populations suggested a weak inverse association between BMI and breast cancer risk. Conversely, there exists substantial evidence for a statistically significant positive association between body weight and breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women. The cumulative exposure to estrogen throughout a woman s life is one of the significant risk factors for breast cancer. After menopause, adipose tissue is a major source of estrogen. Therefore, an increase in body fat after menopause is one of the possible explanations for the positive association of body weight with the development of breast cancer. In premenopausal women, results suggest that measurement of waist or WHR have little effect on risk of breast cancer. Adjustment for BMI abolished the relationship between waist or WHR and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. Therefore weight control in obese women can be effective measure of breast cancer prevention in postmenopausal women.

breast cancer, menopause, body fat distribution, body mass index