Young female smokers at higher risk of most common type of breast cancer

A new study has revealed that young women, who have been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for a decade, are at higher risk of most common type of breast cancer.

According to the researchers, young women who are current or recent smokers and had been smoking a pack a day for at least 10 years, had a 60 percent increased risk of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer.

However, it was found that smoking had no link to a woman's risk of triple-negative breast cancer.

Christopher Li of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and his colleagues conducted a population-based study consisting of 778 patients with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, 182 patients with triple-negative breast cancer and 938 cancer-free controls.

Li said that the health hazards associated with smoking are numerous and well known and his study suggests that smoking might increase the risk of the most common molecular subtype of breast cancer but not influence risk of one of the rarer, more aggressive subtypes.

The study was published in Cancer journal of the American Cancer Society.