UW study: Obesity, late pregnancy increases breast cancer risk

A University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health study found that obese women who never had children or had children after the age of 30 are three times more likely to develop lobular breast cancer.

Beginning in the lobules where breast milk is produced, lobular cancer is difficult to detect on a mammogram and accounts for 20 percent of all breast cancer cases.

The study also found a 2.5 percent increase in lobular breast cancer among women who are not obese and who wait until the age of 30 or later to have children, or never have children.

The research team, led by Carbone Cancer Center scientists Polly Newcomb and Amy Trentham-Dietz, studied 50,000 women, making it the the largest study in the U.S. to find the correlation.