Female College Athletes' Decreased Risk for Breast Cancer Confirmed
When
President Richard Nixon signed the Title IX legislation in 1972 that prohibited
sex discrimination in federally assisted educational programs, he probably
had no idea the law would seed a public health phenomenon. The legislation
allowed thousands of female athletes access to funding previously available
only to their male counterparts. A sociopolitical coup, the law helped
build better athletes and therefore healthier women.
In 1985, HSPH researchers Rose Frisch, associate professor of population sciences; Grace Wyshak, associate professor in biostatistics and population and international health; and others linked collegiate athletics to decreased risk for breast cancer in women for the first time. Now, Wyshak and Frisch have confirmed what they elucidated 15 years ago--that consistent exercise prior to and during the college-age years offers significant protection against breast cancer throughout the lifespan and particularly before age 45.
Title IX legislation grew out of civil rights laws passed in the mid-1960s. US Representative Edith Green from Oregon conducted hearings on sex equity and higher education and paved the way for Title IX passage. At the time, only 18 percent of American women had completed four or more years of college and 15 percent were athletes, according to the US Department of Education. Change was slow. Two years after Title IX enactment, 50,000 men attended colleges on athletic scholarships. The number of women doing the same? Less than 50.
Today, women make up nearly 40 percent of college athletes. Title IX has been credited with creating a generation of powerful American female athletes who won more Summer Olympic medals in 1996 than at any other Olympic games, launched a professional women's basketball league in 1997 (which earned $42 million last year), and won the World Cup in soccer in 1999.
Ironically, when the researchers began their study of female athletes in 1985, they were spurred not by questions of the benefits of exercise but instead by assumed detriments. Previous studies had indicated exercise affects the menstrual cycle, sometimes disrupting it.
Wyshak, Frisch, and their colleagues decided to investigate the long-term health effects of physical activity. They studied more than 5,000 women who had been clearly identified as college athletes in their records and compared their health statistics to similar non-athletes. The data generated more than 18 papers on a variety of subjects, but when Wyshak analyzed breast cancer rates, she thought, "We've got something." The researchers found that women who participated in organized athletics during college lowered their lifetime risk of developing breast cancer by 50 percent. The finding was controversial, but more than 14 papers eventually supported the landmark study.
In 1996, Wyshak queried the same respondents to the 1985 study and found that former athletes under the age of 45 had one-sixth the risk of developing breast cancer as their non-athletic counterparts. They published the paper in the January 2000 issue of the British Journal of Cancer.
Now, Wyshak and Frisch are investigating what other health effects exercise
may have on diseases such as depression and diabetes.
