Background: Limited information exists about the endocrine milieu of
benign breast disease (BBD), a documented breast cancer risk factor. We
compared blood levels of estrogens, testosterone and insulin-like growth
factor-1 (IGF-1) between BBD patients by histological type and women
without breast pathology.
Methods: We studied 578 BBD patients and 178 healthy women in Athens,
Greece, who provided blood samples, and completed
interviewer-administered questionnaires.
Results: Of the BBD patients, 254 had non-proliferative disease, 268
proliferative disease without atypia and 56 atypical hyperplasia.
Comparing BBD patients with healthy women, the per cent differences (and
95% confidence intervals) for blood hormones, among pre-menopausal and
peri/post-menopausal women, respectively, were: 22.4% (-4.0%, 56.1%)
and 32.0% (5.6%, 65.1%) for estradiol; 26.2% (10.1%, 44.8%) and
30.9% (16.8%, 46.6%) for estrone; 19.5% (3.1%, 38.4%) and 16.5%
(-5.0%, 42.9%) for testosterone; and -5.2% (-13.8%, 4.4%) and
-12.1% (-19.8%, -3.6%) for IGF-1. Steroid hormones tended to be
higher in proliferative compared with non-proliferative BBD.
Conclusions: Circulating steroid hormones tend to be higher among women
with BBD than women with no breast pathology and higher in proliferative
than non-proliferative disease; these patterns are more evident among
peri/post-menopausal women. In peri/post-menopausal women IGF-1 was
lower among women with BBD compared with healthy women
