Pill Puzzle: Do antibiotics increase breast cancer risk?
By John Travis
After poring over the pharmacy records of more than 10,000 women, researchers have identified a disturbing correlation: Women in the study who had breast cancer tended to have a history of heavier antibiotic use than cancerfree women. Although this study raises the concern that taking microbe-killing drugs increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer, the investigators stress that there may be more plausible explanations for the unexpected finding.
“People who are on antibiotics should remain on them if they have a bacterial infection,” says Stephen H. Taplin of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. “This study is not saying there’s a causal relationship between antibiotics and breast cancer.”