As a woman's skirt size increases over time, so does her breast cancer risk, according to researchers at the University College London.
A study from the school's Institute for Women's Health, published this week in the online medical journal BMJ Open, followed more 90,000 women in their 50s and 60s. The data show that females whose skirt sizes went up every decade after their mid-20s had a 33 percent greater chance of developing
breast cancer after menopause, according to the BBC.
"If skirt size could be confirmed by others as a good predictor of breast cancer risk in older women, this would be a very simple and easy way to monitor weight gain," study leader Usha Menon, of the Department of Women's Cancer, told the BBC.
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The study also found that going up two skirt sizes over a 10-year period would increase that woman's breast cancer risk by 77 percent.
BMJ Open said in a statement, though, that "no definitive conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, and there is likely to have been some variation in skirt sizing over the years."
Researchers added that other cancers, such as of the pancreas, lining of the womb, and ovaries, have been linked to expanding waistlines.
"Although the exact mechanism of these relationships need to be better understood, there is a suggestion that body fat around the waist is more metabolically active than adipose tissue elsewhere," researchers said in the BMJ Open statement.
Dr. Kala Visvanathan, an associate professor of cancer epidemiology and medical oncology at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told NBC's "Today"show that using skirt size is a relatable marker for women.
"A nice aspect of this study is that it looked at skirt size, which hasn't been looked at before," Visvanathan, director of the cancer genetics and prevention service at Hopkins' Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, said. "It's a nice measure for women, something they can easily relate to."
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