This study is a unique look at the connection between dynamic changes over lifetime and cancer risk – previous studies have compared obese persons and non-obese persons. Identifying controllable risk factors for this disease is especially relevant to women worried about reducing their risk of breast cancer because most of the known risk factors for breast cancer – gender, age, genetics, family history, race, date of first menstruation, late menopause, etc. – are not controllable/modifiable. The research team included Dr. Neugut, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Medical Center and co-director of the Cancer Prevention Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia; Dr. Terry, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''s Mailman School of Public Health; researchers from the University of North Carolina and others.

Published in the American Journal of Epidemiology (2005 Aug 1;162(3):229-37), the study analyzed data collected from women who participated in the Long Island Breast Cancer Study, a multidisciplinary, multi-center examination of environmental risk factors for the disease among 3,000+ residents of New York's Nassau and Suffolk counties. The study was funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.