By Lisa Rapaport Reuters from The Columbus Dispatch

Longtime smokers might face an increased risk of death if they develop breast cancer, according to a Japanese study that adds to a growing body of evidence highlighting the lethal effects of cigarettes.

Among more than 800 women with breast cancer, those who had smoked for more than two decades had at least triple the odds of dying of any cause, or from breast cancer in particular, compared with women who never used cigarettes.

Fewer years of smoking also were linked to an increased risk of death from breast cancer, but the extra risk was so small that it might have been due to chance.

Other studies have explored the connection between smoking and survival among breast-cancer patients. But the current research is among the first to assess the impact of the duration of smoking on outcomes for women with this type of tumor, the study’s co-author, Dr. Masaaki Kawai, a breast oncologist at Miyagi Cancer Center Hospital in Japan, said in an email.

Worldwide, breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. About one in nine women eventually will develop it, according to the National Institutes of Health. The risk increases with age, from 1 in 227 at age 30 to 1 in 26 by age 70.

Kawai and colleagues followed 848 women who were treated at the Miyagi Cancer Center Hospital between 1997 and 2007 for newly diagnosed breast cancer.

Women who described themselves as current smokers were typically younger when their breast cancer was diagnosed, about 49 years old on average, compared with 53 for women who claimed to be former smokers and 58 for nonsmokers.

The current smokers also tended to weigh less, have more advanced tumors, and have fewer health complications than the other women in the study.

With half of the women in the study followed for at least seven years, the researchers saw 170 deaths from all causes — including 132 deaths from breast cancer.

The findings add to a growing body of research pointing to the specific risks smoking poses for women with breast cancer, said Peggy Reynolds, a researcher at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and Stanford University School of Medicine.

“There are now quite a few studies suggesting that active smokers diagnosed with breast cancer have poorer survival — not to mention accumulating evidence that smokers may have a greater risk of developing breast cancer,” Reynolds, who wasn’t involved in the study, said in an email.

This study, however, didn’t look at whether smoking causes breast cancer.

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