Breast cancer is the second most common cancer to strike women.
In the United States alone in the year 2000, an estimated 180,000 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed, and nearly 40,000 women will die from the disease. Increasing evidence suggests that physical characteristics such as height and weight may also play a role. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology examined the relationship between height, weight and breast cancer risk as part of the Pooling Project of Diet and Cancer, with particular focus on the potential influence of menopausal status. Seven previous studies were analyzed from data on more than 337,000 women with 4,385 incident cases of invasive breast cancer. Increasing height was associated with increased risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.