Breast cancer survivors at elevated risk for fractures

Postmenopausal breast cancer survivors have a heightened risk of fractures, according to a new report. Given the growing size of this patient population, the investigators say, strategies are urgently needed to cut the risk of fractures.

The findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine for March 14, are based on an analysis of data from 5298 breast cancer survivors enrolled in the Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study. The comparison group consisted of 80,848 women with no cancer history at baseline. The subjects were followed for about 5 years. After adjusting for age, weight, ethnicity, and geographic region, breast cancer survivors were 31% more likely to sustain a fracture than controls, Dr. Zhao Chen, from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues report.Breast cancer history raised the risk of fractures at all body sites, except the hip. However, the heightened risk of vertebral fractures was only statistically significant for breast cancer survivors diagnosed before 55 years of age.After accounting for medication use, hormone levels, comorbidities, and other factors, the heightened fracture risk seen in survivors fell to 15%, the investigators point out.Still, “the excess number of fractures may be as high as 13,000 per year for the 2 million postmenopausal breast cancer survivors in the US,” the authors note. “Clearly,” they say, “more research is needed to understand the fracture risk in this special population and to develop more strategies to reduce the number of fractures among breast cancer survivors.”(Source: Arch Intern Med 2005;165:552-558: Reuters Health: Oncolink: March 2005.)