“Women with thyroid disease are more likely to see their doctor and to undergo examinations including mammography,” Jorgensen said. “Women with overactive thyroid disease also are predisposed to other diseases such as breast cancer, but it is not the overactive thyroid by itself. Thyroid hormones may contribute to development of breast cancer. [And] treatment of overactive thyroid disease increases the risk of breast cancer. These are all possibilities, but the bottom line is that we do not know for sure.”
Jorgensen, a clinical professor in the department of endocrinology and internal medicine at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark, and his colleagues report the findings in the Feb. 11 issue of the European Journal of Endocrinology.