Stressful life events and breast cancer

Life events are physical and psychosocial events that can cause problems in normal daily activities. A large number of studies have examined the relationship between stressful life events and breast cancer, but the results are controversial. Many breast cancer patients in Iran believe that their disease is related to stressful events that they experienced before the disease. This study was conducted to examine the relationship between stressful life events and breast cancer A nested case-control study was designed and participants were interviewed before the breast biopsy. Based on the pathology reports, cases were patients with confirmed breast cancer and controls were patients with benign breast disease. Data were collected by a trained interviewer using a structured questionnaire including age, marital status, education, family history, the number and severity of life events. In all, 198 patients including 48 breast cancer and 150 benign breast disease were studied. The findings showed that there is no association between breast cancer and life events except physical or psychological disease in spouse or children and unemployment in children. In multivariate logistic regression, only age was the risk factor for breast cancer. We concluded that considerable life events can be as a risk factor for developing breast cancer. Further studies with larger sample size are necessary.