In a first-of-its-kind study, physician-scientists from University Hospitals Case Medical Center’s Seidman Cancer Center and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University discovered an association between insufficient sleep and aggressive breast cancer tumors as well as likelihood of cancer recurrence. The findings were published in the August issue of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
Led by Cheryl Thompson, PhD, the research team studied the medical records and survey responses of 412 postmenopausal breast cancer patients who underwent treatment at UH Case Medical Center and testing with Oncotype DX. All 412 patients were enrolled at the time of diagnosis. When asked about their average sleep duration in the previous 2 years, researchers discovered that women who reported an average of 6 hours or less of sleep per night prior to their breast cancer diagnosis had higher Oncotype DX tumor recurrence scores.
“This is the first study to suggest that women who routinely sleep fewer hours may develop more aggressive breast cancers compared with women who sleep longer hours,” said Thompson, who is an assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and lead author. “We found a strong correlation between fewer hours of sleep per night and worse recurrence scores, specifically in postmenopausal breast cancer patients. This suggests that lack of sufficient sleep may cause more aggressive tumors, but more research will need to be done to verify this finding and understand the causes of this association.”
Although the association between sleep duration and recurrence score was strong in postmenopausal women, the study authors note that there was no link in premenopausal women. Study findings indicate that sleep may affect carcinogenic pathway(s) relevant only to the development of postmenopausal breast cancer, and not premenopausal cancer.
“Short sleep duration is a public health hazard leading not only to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but also cancer,” said Li Li, MD, PhD, a study coauthor and family medicine physician in the Department of Family Medicine at UH Case Medical Center. “Effective intervention to increase duration of sleep and improve quality of sleep could be an underappreciated avenue for reducing the risk of developing more aggressive breast cancers and recurrence.”
Source: University Hospitals.
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