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A Prospective Study of Hemoglobin A1c Concentrations and Risk of Breast Cancer in Women

¹ Division of Preventive Medicine, ² Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, ³ The Donald W. Reynolds Center for Cardiovascular Research, Department of Medicine, and ⁴ Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School; ⁵ Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School; ⁶ Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health; and ⁷ Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Requests for reprints: Jennifer Lin, Division of Preventive Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, 900 Commonwealth Avenue East, Boston, MA 02215. Phone: 617-278-0894; Fax: 617-232-3541; E-mail: jhlin{at}rics.bwh.harvard.edu.

Impaired glucose metabolism and hyperinsulinemia have been hypothesized to increase breast cancer risk. However, findings from observational studies relating blood concentrations of hyperinsulinemia markers to breast cancer risk have been inconsistent. We prospectively evaluated whether hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) concentrations predict breast cancer risk in a large female cohort. We included 27,110 female participants of the Women's Health Study who were, at baseline, free of cancer and had usable blood specimens as well as sufficient information on potential risk factors for breast cancer. Relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) were estimated from Cox proportional hazards regression models. All Ps were two sided. During an average of 10 years of follow-up, 790 incident cases of invasive breast cancer were confirmed. Higher baseline HbA1c levels were not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. The multivariate RR for the highest relative to the lowest quintile of HbA1c levels was 0.87 (95% CI, 0.69-1.10; P_trend = 0.22). Higher HbA1c levels were also not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer according to alternative clinical cutoff points for HbA1c or in the analyses stratified by body mass index or according to certain tumor characteristics. However, a weakly inverse association was noted among postmenopausal women, especially among those who had never used hormone therapy. There was also a weakly inverse association between HbA1c levels and estrogen receptor–negative breast tumors. These data suggest that higher HbA1c concentrations do not seem to increase risk of breast cancer among apparently healthy women. (Cancer Res 2006; 66(5): 2869-75)

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