Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Parity (childbearing) significantly decreases a woman's risk of breast cancer.Several factors within the mammary gland are postulated to contribute to parityinduced protection including (but not restricted to), a reduction in the number of mammary stem cells (MaSCs).This review will explore whether the protection afforded by parity is specific to certain breast cancer subtypes or is influenced by hormone receptor status.We will discuss how additional reproductive factors such as multiple births, a young age at first full term birth, and breastfeeding can also impact protection.We specifically assess whether the beneficial effects of early childbearing are mediated by changes in the MaSC population, which are thought to be abundant in the young breast.Finally we provide an update on the in-vivo work being performed in mice to directly investigate the effect of parity on MaSC and then discuss whether these findings provide evidence for the MaSCs being key mediators of parity-associated protection against breast cancer.
DOI: 10.26181/22207675
Language: English
Topic: Cancer Risks and Factors
Subfield: Oncology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2915042894