Breast cancer risk is positively associated with height

Inter- and intra-national epidemiological studies point to an association between socio-economic status and breast cancer risk. Although there is no direct evidence, the most favoured reason for this relationship is nutritional. An enhanced dietary status, especially during childhood, would be reflected in adult body build. It is, therefore, surprising that there is uncertainty in the literature concerning the association between height and breast cancer risk. In reviewing the publications on this topic it became apparent that case-control studies which found no association between height and risk tended to use self-reported height. In contrast reports claiming a significant, and positive, correlation tended to use heights which were measured by the investigators. In a prospective study we found in a cohort of 2731 ostensibly normal women that, although there was a highly significant linear correlation between self-reported and measured height, the shortest women over-estimated their height whilst the tallest volunteers under-estimated theirs. The significance of crude relative risk and height in this cohort was markedly attenuated when self-reported height was used compared to measured height. Such a systematic error could have a profound effect on the conclusions of studies in this field which relied on self-reporting and could explain the conflicting reports in the literature.