Higher survival rate after pregnancy in breast ca patients under age 35.(News)

ATLANTA -- Young women who became pregnant after breast cancer treatment were significantly less likely to have a recurrence or to die of the disease, according to a French retrospective study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Dr. Remy Largillier reported that 5-year overall survival was 97% for 118 women who became pregnant after breast cancer, but only 80% for 762 women who did not. The hazard ratio in favor of pregnancy was 0.23.

"Perhaps it is not a counterindication to have a pregnancy," Dr. Largillier, of the Centre Antoine Lacassagne in Nice, and his coinvestigators concluded.

In a discussion of the poster, Dr. Robert W Carlson, professor of medicine at the cancer center of Stanford (Calif.) University, described the study as important, but cautioned that it was not cause to encourage breast cancer survivors to become pregnant. The positive outcome "may be nothing but a healthy mother effect," he said. "They become pregnant because they feel physiologically able to."

The take-home message, Dr. Carlson said, is that "pregnancy subsequent to breast cancer does not have a negative impact on breast cancer outcome, and a pregnancy recent to a diagnosis of breast cancer does not independently predict for a poor outcome."

In conducting the study, the investigators cited the lack of data supporting the decision of many women to wait at least 2 years after breast cancer treatment before they become pregnant. Although some studies have suggested that pregnancy might be protective, Dr. Largillier's group acknowledged that these may have been biased by the "healthy mother" effect, in which only women who feel healthy and disease-free choose to become pregnant.

The study reviewed 908 patients younger than age 35 years who were treated for nonmetastatic and unilateral invasive breast carcinoma at eight ...