Early Pregnancy Prevents Breast Cancer

Due to the performance of two specialized genes, the body of a young pregnant woman gets protection from breast cancer. This discovery was made by Swiss scientists, whose scientific work was published in the Breast Cancer Research journal.

According to the press release published by the BioMed Central publishing house, the birth of a child by a woman under the age of twenty years reduces the risk of breast cancer by half.

Early pregnancy can also protect rodents from cancer. The scientists from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel have found that the interaction of the two genes, Wnt and Notch, is altered in the breast tissues of the pregnant mice compared with the mice of the same age, which do not have offsprings. Both of these genes are the opposite components of the system controlling cellular metabolism in the body. Using a microchip, the researchers found that the activity of the first gene, associated with feminization, was reduced after pregnancy, and the proteins of the second gene, on the contrary, have become increasingly active.

The level of interaction of these two genes is constantly changing in the basal cells of the mammary glands of mice during pregnancy.

According to the lead researcher Mohamed Bentires-Alj, decreased activity of the Wnt gene is the reverse of the process that occurs in most types of cancer. If you tighten the control over the performance of the Wnt/Notch genes after pregnancy, they would possibly give a new opportunity for the humanity to prevent the growth of cancer tissues.