CAN stressful life events, such as divorce or conflict at work, result in a serious illness like cancer?
A number of studies have investigated this question, with mixed results — some large studies, which have followed thousands of people over time, have found that stress does increase risk of cancer, while other similar studies have not.
In reality, it is likely that a mix of factors influence risk.
Professor Phyllis Butow will present her Sydney Science Forum — Does Stress Cause Cancer? lecture this evening at The University of Sydney.
Professor Butow, from the School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, will reveal the findings from a new Australian study, which involved more than 2000 women, and examined the link between stress and cancer.
“There is a common belief in the community that stress does cause cancer. People who have cancer look for a reason and often look at the events around their diagnosis time,” she said.
“Interestingly, those who haven’t had cancer are more likely to think cancer is genetic, compared to the beliefs of cancer patients.”
Professor Butow will introduce attendees to the forms that stress takes and how stress is measured, including the psychological and physiological markers of stress. She will discuss how we can “prove” that stress causes cancer, and how scientists are unravelling the various causes of cancer.
“There’s a lot of scientific debate around stress causing cancer, as there is a theoretical biological plausibility that stress could cause cancer. But does it?”
Professor Butow says her team of researchers found no evidence of a relationship between stress and breast cancer.
It is not surprising that people do look for a link between stress and cancer — diagnosis is often a surprise, and people want an explanation for it,” she told news.com.au.
“If they know what caused their cancer, it can help them to feel more in control of avoiding that in the future.
“However, some people are burdened by a perception that they may have increased their risk of cancer by not coping adequately with stress in their lives.
“Our very large study of over 2000 women at high risk of breast cancer found no evidence of a link between stress and breast cancer, nor between how people are coping and cancer. This is good news in many ways.
“Cancer risk is more likely to be increased by factors such as genetics, ageing, smoking, and other factors like obesity and low exercise”.
This evening Professor Butow will also discuss how previous studies on stress and cancer are biased by patients retrospectively connecting stress to their cancer, and how this new study avoids this bias by being a prospective study — starting with people who don’t have cancer and recording their stress levels through time, and eventual cancer results.
“Our study focused on breast cancer, and recruited women from the kConFab database — the Kathleen Cuningham Foundation Consortium for research into Familial Breast cancer. We followed 2739 women in our study for 15 years, doing extensive measures of the stresses in their lives for each three year period,” said Professor Butow.
“The results of this longitudinal study are extremely interesting, and actually very reassuring for those with cancer.”
Discover what this study found on the role that stress plays in causing cancer in this fascinating free public talk. After Professor Butow’s talk, enjoy hands-on activities and demonstrations run by the School of Psychology.
Sydney Science Forum: Does stress cause cancer?
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Time: 5:45pm — 7:00pm
Venue: Eastern Avenue Auditorium, University of Sydney
Cost: FREE
