Oct. 8, 2007 - This year an estimated 178,480 U.S. women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and 40,460 will die from the disease. Only lung cancer accounts for more cancer deaths in U.S. women. Though there are some things women can do to decrease their risk-- such as breastfeeding, exercising regularly and not drinking more than two alcoholic beverages a day?other factors, like getting periods before age 12, having a family history of breast cancer or simply being old, are beyond their control. Still, these “markers” help doctors know who to watch more carefully.

A study published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Human Biology suggests a new marker: having a mom with wide, round hips. This is a sign of high estrogen concentrations, say researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and England’s University of Southampton, and when female babies are exposed to this estrogen in the womb, they develop an increased vulnerability to breast cancer later in life. Researchers looked at 6,370 women born in Helsinki, Finland between 1934 and 1944 because their mothers' pelvic bones were measured during routine prenatal care. They found that breast cancer rates were more than three times higher in women with wide-hipped mothers. NEWSWEEK’s Karen Springen talks with study co-author Dr. David J.P. Barker, a medical doctor and epidemiologist at Oregon Health & Science University. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: How did you get the idea to look at women's hip size?
Barker: It's now clear that important diseases, including coronary heart disease and diabetes, originate through development in the womb. What we haven't yet addressed is whether intrauterine life is importantly linked to cancer. And this paper says, “It sure is.”? If your mother's hormonal profile is linked to you getting cancer, and it is, then it has to begin in the womb. That's the only time you're exposed to your mother's hormones. Particularly it has to be early in the womb because later on, the placenta forms a barrier between you and your mother's hormones. It's when the breast stem cells are laid down.

When is that?
It's about eight weeks.

What should wide-hipped women do since they can't change the size of their bones?
What we've found is that there's a vulnerability to breast cancer acquired in embryonic life. If you know people are vulnerable, you can try to protect them. If your mother has broad hips, you may be more vulnerable. It's like most of the money in breast cancer research is spent looking for genes. The idea is that if you could look for genes, you could start to look for what makes them vulnerable. But known genes explain less than five percent of breast cancer.

Big hips don't put the mother herself at greater risk?
It doesn't look from the findings in Finland as though it puts you at greater risk. It is a marker of a high estrogen concentration in the blood, which adversely affects the daughter in her embryonic life.

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