Women Who Are Early Risers Have Lower Risk Of Breast Cancer, Says New Study

(CNN) — Women who are naturally early risers were found to have lower risk of developing breast cancer than evening types in a new study. One in 100 women who considered themselves morning people developed breast cancer, compared with two in every 100 women who called themselves evening people. Cancer risks associated with a person’s body clock and sleep patterns have been reported in previous research and the UK researchers wanted to explore sleep traits in more detail, as well as any genetic factors underlying this. Self-reported preferences for mornings or evenings (by their own definition of that preference) were recorded in more than 180,000 women, led by Dr. Rebecca Richmond, research fellow in the Cancer Research UK Integrative Cancer Epidemiology Program and the Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, and presented Tuesday at the NCRI Cancer Conference in Glasgow. Richmond’s team also analyzed genetic variants linked to whether someone is a morning or night person in more than 220,000 women to find out if these could help provide a causal link to breast cancer. This type of statistical model, called Mendelian randomization, showed that people whose genes made them more likely to be early risers were less likely to develop breast cancer by as much as 48%, as shown from the 220,000 participants in the study. The second analysis, using self-reported data on sleep from 180,000 participants, showed a similar trend of early rising women having a 40...
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