This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Oncology  • Breast Cancer  • Women's Health  • Women's Health, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Cnattingius and colleagues¹ describe a positive association between placental weight and maternal risk of breast cancer. However, they did not specifically address how placental size affects the risk of breast cancer compared with nulliparous women. In the absence of this information, it is difficult to know how to use the results of this study in counseling patients.

For example, the results indicate that a woman who had 2 consecutive births with placentas weighing more than 700 g is at a 2-fold increased risk of breast cancer compared with a woman with placentas weighing less than 500 g in both births. However, this does not indicate whether she is at higher or lower risk for breast cancer than a woman who has never achieved pregnancy. It does not help answer the question whether large placentas obliterate the protective effect of pregnancy.²

Without this perspective, a reader might . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Ringland S. Murray, MD
ringland_murray@med.unc.edu
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

RELATED ARTICLES

Placental Weight and Maternal Risk of Breast Cancer—Reply
Sven Cnattingius, Anna Torrång, Anders Ekbom, Fredrik Granath, Gunnar Petersson, and Mats Lambe
JAMA. 2006;295(10):1125.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Pregnancy Characteristics and Maternal Risk of Breast Cancer
Sven Cnattingius, Anna Torrång, Anders Ekbom, Fredrik Granath, Gunnar Petersson, and Mats Lambe
JAMA. 2005;294(19):2474-2480.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT