BERLIN, April 21 (UPI) -- As women approach age 70, they become less likely to be diagnosed with aggressive tumors that spread to the lymph nodes, a Belgium study said.
Study leader Hans Wildiers of University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, found women's risk of positive lymph nodes decreased by 13 percent for each decade they aged -- up to age 70. However, after age 70 the odds of lymph node involvement doubled with every 10-year increase in age -- in women who had tumors that were no bigger than 15mm across. If the tumors were larger than 42 to 43 mm the risk of lymph node involvement continued to decrease.
Wildiers and his team investigated 2,227 breast cancer patients between 2000 and 2006 at the Hospitals Leuven and compared results with a separate database of over 11,000 breast cancer patients on the Eindhoven Cancer Registry.
"The effect of age of lymph node positivity is not straightforward," Wildiers said in a statement. "There is an interaction between age and tumor size, suggesting that, up to the age of 70, age mainly has a positive effect ."
The study results were reported at the 6th European Breast Cancer Conference in Berlin.
