Artificial light at night linked to high breast cancer risk
New York: In a warning to women living in towns and cities which are flooded with all sorts of artificial outdoor light at night, new research claim that higher outdoor light at night exposure may be a risk factor for postmenopausal breast cancer.Highest exposure was associated with a 10% higher risk of developing breast cancer during follow-up, after controlling for confounding factors.
Previous studies have reported relationships between outdoor light at night and the breast cancer risk but their findings were mixed.
In new research, published in the International Journal of Cancer, the team analysed residential outdoor light at night estimated from satellite imagery in 1996 and assessed rates of breast cancer over 16 years of follow-up in 186,981 postmenopausal women.
"The small number of studies to investigate this question have often relied on subjective exposure data and yielded inconsistent results," said study senior author Rena Jones from the National Cancer Institute in the US.
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