Although recent years have helped make breast cancer treatment more effective, a lot of women give up the idea of having a baby fearing that the cancer may return. So, for a lot of breast cancer patients the issue of a safe pregnancy is quite significant. Today, for the first time, a new study shows that pregnancy can be safe even after breast cancer treatment.

At the eight European Breast Cancer Conference that takes places in Vienna, Austria a team of scientists have presented a study that will give hope to women suffering from breast cancer that want a children of their own at some point. Leaking proof, many have feared that the breast treatment will put at risk a potential pregnancy, so a lot of women have given up on their dream of having a baby.

The study’s findings point out that becoming pregnant after being diagnosed with breast cancer does not put the women at danger of having the cancer reappearing. Until these findings, there was a common fear that the pregnancy would increase the estrogen in the body and thus refuel cancer cells.

Dr. Hatem Azim Jr. with the Jules Bordet Institute in Brussels explained that their study showed that women that had breast cancer and became pregnant seem to be enjoying a much longer life, as opposed to breast cancer patients that haven’t. “We found that breast-cancer patients who became pregnant also had a lower risk of death compared to their matched controls, irrespective of status” added the researcher.

The researcher also pointed one other finding of the study: “We found that patients who become pregnant within two years of breast-cancer diagnosis appeared to have a better disease-free survival compared to those who did not become pregnant” .

But researchers point out that the study is just the beginning so “this finding should be interpreted with caution as it could be confounded by potential selection bias, and hence pregnancy within two years of diagnosis should be regarded as safe, and not as protective”.

The study enrolled 333 women of an average age of 34 with positive or negative estrogen receptor status. These women became pregnant at any time after the breast cancer diagnosis.