Obesity and breast cancer - WLTZ 38 | Columbus Georgia Regional News & Community

(NBC News) - Can obesity in women with breast cancer actually make the disease worse?

In fact women who are obese face an increased risk for recurrence or death from breast cancer.

Researchers at Albert Einstein college of medicine compared the outcomes of breast cancer patients based on their weight.

They found those who were obese had a thirty percent increased risk for their disease coming back, and a 50 percent higher risk of death.

Even women who were overweight, but not obese, had an increased risk.

They say hormonal changes associated with obesity may fuel certain cancers.

Researchers found a relationship between increasing body mass index and poor outcomes only in women who had hormone-receptor positive breast cancer, the most common type of the disease.