ArticleBreast cancer research and treatment2023
History of infertility and risk of breast cancer: a prospective cohort study.
Article in Breast cancer research and treatment, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- Normal weight obesity, circulating biomarkers and risk of breast cancer: a prospective cohort study and meta-analysis.British journal of cancer · 2025Pooled it
- Medically Assisted Reproduction and Hormone-Related Cancers.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- The parity paradox: does number of children (parity) influence breast cancer mortality across the life course?BMC cancer · 2025Article
- Breast Cancer Is Increased in Women With Primary Ovarian Insufficiency.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2025Article
- Association between gynecological cancers and female infertility: insights from bidirectional Mendelian randomization analysis.BMC women's health · 2025Article
- Infertility treatments and risk of breast benign diseases: a case‒control study.BMC women's health · 2024Article
- Infertility and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer in the women's health initiative.Breast cancer research and treatment · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
purposeResearch on infertility and risk of breast cancer has been conflicting, potentially because many well-established breast cancer risk factors, such as pregnancy history, are strongly correlated with infertility.
methodsWe followed participants in the Nurses' Health Study II from 1989 to 2015 (n = 103,080) for the development of invasive breast cancer and calculated Hazard Ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) using Cox regression. Participants with a self-reported history of infertility (12 months of trying without conception) were compared to gravid women with no history of infertility. We classified breast cancer by menopausal status and investigated mediation by reproductive factors.
resultsOver 26 years of follow-up, 26,208 (25.4%) women reported a history of infertility, and 3,201 women were newly diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. We observed no association between infertility history and risk of overall breast cancer (HR: 1.05, 95% CI: 0.97-1.14) or premenopausal breast cancer (RR: 0.93, 95% CI: 0.83-1.03). However, we observed a modest association between history of infertility and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer (HR: 1.13, 95% CI: 1.00-1.28), approximately 50% of which could be attributed to lower total parity and later age at first birth (95% CI: 8.2%-91.0%).
conclusionsWomen with a history of infertility were at increased risk of postmenopausal breast cancer. Older age at first birth and lower total parity explained approximately half of the association between infertility and risk of postmenopausal breast cancer.
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