Women who suffer from migraines, an often debilitating type of headache, have a significantly lower breast cancer risk compared to women who do not experience migraines, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington found that women who have a history of migraines have a 30 per cent lower risk of developing breast cancer.
The study also found that a history of migraines reduced the risk of estrogen-receptor and/or progesterone-receptor tumours, which are the most common subtypes of breast cancer.
The researchers said that this is the first study of its kind to find a link between migraines and breast cancer. Preliminary data from two other studies the team has conducted confirm these findings.
"While these results need to be interpreted with caution, they point to a possible new factor that may be related to breast-cancer risk," lead study author Dr. Christopher Li, a breast cancer epidemiologist at the Hutchinson Center, said in a statement. "This gives us a new avenue to explore the biology behind risk reduction."
The findings are published in the November issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.
The researchers do not know exactly how migraines work on the body to influence breast cancer risk.
However, they suspect it may be a result of hormonal fluctuations associated with migraine.
For example pregnant women, who are in a so-called high-estrogen state, experience as much as an 80 per cent reduction in the number of migraines they experience. Previous research has found that estrogen can stimulate the development of estrogen- and progesterone-receptor tumours.
