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News
Study reveals effects of obesity and metabolic syndrome on breast cancer
Women who eat a low-fat diet can decrease their risk of dying from breast cancer by 21 per cent, new findings suggest
A new US study has revealed the effects obesity and metabolic syndrome can have on breast cancer.
Both obesity and metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions like high blood pressure and high blood sugar, increase the risk of breast cancer, but in differing ways for different subtypes of the cancer.
A University of Oklahoma researcher helped to lead a study that produced those results, which may help physicians better care for patients at higher risk for breast cancer.
The study is from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), an effort that began in the early 1990s and continues to yield valuable data about postmenopausal women’s risks for cancer, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and other conditions.
The initiative, funded by the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute, a component of the National Institutes of Health, is the largest women’s health prevention study ever conducted.
Robert Wild, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the OU College of Medicine, has been involved with the WHI since its beginning and is a co-author of the latest study, published in Cancer.
The research followed another WHI study showing that women who ate a low-fat diet for about eight years decreased their risk of dying from breast cancer by 21 per cent over the next 20 years.
Those findings led researchers to consider whether the reduced risk was related to a decrease in obesity or an improvement in the conditions associated with metabolic syndrome. As it turns out, the answer is both.
“This study shows that obesity had an effect on breast cancer independent of metabolic syndrome, and that metabolic syndrome had an effect on breast cancer independent of obesity,” Wild said. “And they affected various subtypes in different ways, which influenced whether women were diagnosed with breast cancer and whether they died from it.”
The upshot of the study is simpler: keeping both waist circumference and metabolic conditions under control is important to reduce the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer and the risk of dying from it.
“This study is essentially saying to get back to the basics,” Wild said. “Prevention is important, and we need to be paying attention to both metabolic syndrome and weight.”
Metabolic syndrome includes increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol or triglycerides, all of which also increase the risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
The study found that:
- Metabolic syndrome is significantly associated with 53 per cent more deaths after breast cancer and a 44 per cent higher breast cancer mortality.
- Metabolic syndrome is also associated with poor prognosis in two specific types of breast cancer: oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive and progesterone receptor (PR)-negative.
- ER-positive breast cancer occurs when high levels of oestrogen in the breast cancer cells help the cancer grow and spread. This type of cancer represents 70-80 per cent of all breast cancer diagnoses and typically responds well to hormone therapy, which blocks hormones like oestrogen.
- PR-negative breast cancer means the cancer has no hormone receptors and therefore does not respond to hormone therapy. It also tends to grow faster than hormone-positive cancers.
- Obesity status is significantly associated with more total breast cancers and more deaths after breast cancer, with higher mortality only in women with severe obesity.
- Obesity status is also associated with good prognosis in ER-positive and PR-positive cancers. Both can be treated with hormone therapy and tend to grow more slowly than those that are hormone receptor-negative.
Wild said: “The Women’s Health Initiative is the gift that keeps on giving. It is a great opportunity to make use of quality information. In the beginning, I don’t think we knew what a valuable resource it would still be years later.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched an AI tool in beta to help policymakers, experts and healthcare professionals access sexual and reproductive health information faster.
Called ChatHRP, the tool was created by WHO’s Human Reproduction Programme and draws only on verified research and guidance collected by HRP and WHO.
It uses natural language processing and retrieval-augmented generation to produce referenced content and cut the time spent searching through documents across different platforms and databases.
WHO said ChatHRP also has multilingual capabilities and low-bandwidth functionality to support use in a wide range of settings.
The beta-testing phase is aimed at a broad professional audience, including policymakers, healthcare workers, researchers and civil society groups.
WHO said the tool can help users quickly access up-to-date evidence, find sources for academic work and verify information on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Examples of questions it can answer include the latest violence against women data in Oceania for women aged 15 to 49, recommendations on managing diabetes during pregnancy, and whether PrEP and contraception can be used at the same time. PrEP is medicine used to reduce the risk of getting HIV.
WHO added that the system will be updated regularly as new HRP materials are published and includes a feedback loop so users can flag gaps in the information provided.
The launch comes amid wider concern about misinformation in sexual and reproductive health.
A 2025 scoping review found that misinformation in digital spaces is a systemic issue that can undermine human rights, reinforce discriminatory social norms and exclude marginalised voices.
The review also said misinformation can affect health systems by shaping provider knowledge and practice, disrupting service delivery and creating barriers to equitable care.
WHO said ChatHRP is intended to give users streamlined access to reliable information as a counter to “algorithms, opinions, or misinformation”.
Events
Women’s HealthX unveils Northwell Health, Corewell Health, Biogen & more to headline Chronic Disease stage
Women’s HealthX has announced its lineup of healthcare trailblazers speaking on Chronic Disease Management, alongside other specialisations including Fertility, Sexual Health, Maternity, Menopause and Cognitive Health, taking a holistic approach to women’s health.
It will bring together 750+ leaders across pharma, health systems, and innovation to address one of the most urgent and underexamined challenges in healthcare; the sex difference gap in data and evidence.
Since cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death among women globally, and autoimmune and neurological conditions affect women at significantly higher rates, Women’s HealthX will home in on chronic disease management with 17+ sessions spotlighting case studies and lessons learned.
The Chronic Disease Management Stage at Women’s HealthX responds directly to this gap, convening senior decision makers and innovators to explore how sex specific science, digital health, and new care models can reshape outcomes for women.
Attending pharma & healthcare organisations include:
- Tracy Sims, Executive Director, Cardiometabolic Health, Eli Lilly
- Adrian Kielhorn, Senior Director, Global Head HEOR Neurology, Alexion Pharmaceuticals
- Lauren Powell, Head of Health Equity and Clinical Innovation, Biogen
- Amy Kao, SVP, Head of Neuroscience and Immunology Research, EMD Serono
- Stella Vnook, Executive Chair and CEO, Kaida Biopharma
- Amanda Borsky, Director, Clinical Research, Northwell Health
- Lacey McIntosh, Division Chief, Oncologic and Molecular Imaging, UMass Memorial Medical Center
- Nicole Turck, Vice President Operations, Women’s Health, Corewell Health
- Mette Dyhrberg, CEO, Autoimmune Registry
- Lyn Agostinelli, Principal Consultant, Halloran Consulting Group
Sessions addressing the real gaps in women’s chronic care
The agenda features a series of high impact sessions tackling the structural and scientific gaps in women’s health:
- Improving outcomes in obesity through evidence based person centered care: Eli Lilly
- Tackling sex based health inequities by breaking down barriers and bias: Alexion Pharmaceuticals
- Close the health equity gap in women’s health by improving how autoimmune diseases are diagnosed, treated and managed: Autoimmune Registry
- How a GYN only care model is driving faster access to gynecological care: Corewell Health
- Transforming early detection in ovarian cancer: new pathways to accuracy, safety, and better outcomes: UMass Memorial Medical Center
Panel discussions include:
- Why chronic disease looks different in women and why health systems haven’t adapted: Biogen, Kaida Biopharma, EMD Serono
- How can we better engage with our customers: Northwell Health, Halloran Consulting Group
Health equity starts here. REGISTER YOUR PLACE
Why This Matters Now
Women’s HealthX positions chronic disease not just as a clinical challenge, but as a critical frontier for innovation, investment, and system redesign.
From AI powered monitoring and digital therapeutics to real world data and integrated care pathways, the stage highlights where meaningful progress is already being made and where the biggest opportunities lie.
For the FemTech ecosystem, this represents a pivotal moment: aligning technology, clinical insight, and commercial strategy to finally close the long standing data and care gaps in women’s health.
About Women’s HealthX
Women’s HealthX is where the transformation of women’s health begins at its true foundation: data, science, and evidence.
It’s the leading event dedicated to closing the sex difference data gap and accelerating breakthroughs through science driven, real world case studies.
Taking place on December 3 to 4, 2026 in Boston, USA, the exhibition will bring together more than 750 healthcare leaders, including clinicians, payers, employers, investors, and policymakers.
Seven different stages with 150+ expert speakers taking an holistic approach to women’s health. From fertility, maternity, sexual health, cognitive health, menopause and chronic disease, we address care at every stage of a woman’s life.
An AI atlas has mapped how reproductive organs age through menopause, with the ovaries, vagina and uterus changing on different timelines.
To better understand how this process affects health, researchers at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center developed what they describe as the first large-scale atlas of female reproductive system ageing, using artificial intelligence.
The team combined 1,112 tissue images from 659 samples, covering 304 women aged 20 to 70, with gene expression data from thousands of genes.
This allowed them to reconstruct how seven key reproductive organs, including the uterus, ovary, vagina, cervix, breast and fallopian tubes, age over time.
The study used the supercomputing power of MareNostrum 5 together with advanced image-recognition methods to process the data.
Using deep learning techniques, the researchers detected visible tissue changes as well as the underlying molecular processes linked to ageing in each organ.
The result was a detailed, organ-by-organ map of the reproductive system’s ageing process.
The researchers found that not all organs age in the same way or at the same speed. The ovaries and vagina showed a more gradual ageing process that begins even before menopause officially starts.
By contrast, the uterus appeared to undergo more sudden changes around the time of menopause.
Even within a single organ, different tissues aged at different rates. In the uterus, for example, the mucosa, its inner lining, and the muscular layer did not change in sync. These tissues also appeared to be particularly sensitive to the hormonal and biological shifts associated with menopause.
Marta Melé, leader of the transcriptomics and functional genomics group at BSC and director of the study, said: “Our results show that it acts as a turning point that profoundly reorganises other organs and tissues of the reproductive system, and allows us to identify the genes and molecular processes that could be behind these changes.”
Building on the finding that organs age according to different patterns, co-first author Laura Ventura said the research “paves the way for personalised medicine where treatments are tailored to a woman’s specific molecular profile and the specific tissues showing the most age-related distress.”
The study also identified molecular signals linked to reproductive ageing that can be detected in blood samples from more than 21,441 women.
These biomarkers could allow doctors to monitor the condition of reproductive organs in a non-invasive way, potentially helping to anticipate risks such as pelvic floor complications without the need for biopsies.
According to the researchers, this could lead to simpler and more accessible clinical tools for tracking women’s health over time.
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