Army of Women
Contact Us|Site Map

Researcher Sign-in

Sign-in to your account to find out the status of your proposal, or to update your current research project.

Forget your username or password?

Current Research Projects

Project Title Sleep, Circadian Hormonal Dysregulation and Breast Cancer Survival

Researcher: David Spiegel, MD, Stanford School of Medicine, Palo Alto, California at Stanford School of Medicine

Study Abstract: Recent research provides evidence that disrupted circadian rhythms are associated with increased risk of breast cancer incidence and faster progression to mortality. We have observed that loss of normal diurnal cortisol rhythm predicts early mortality with breast cancer. This disrupted rhythm is associated with more awakenings during the night. Recent studies have shown that nighttime shift work is associated with a higher risk of getting breast cancer, and in a murine model disrupting circadian cycles produced a doubling of implanted tumor growth. There is also recent evidence that abnormal clock genes are associated with cancer. Our data and those of others increasingly point toward disrupted circadian cycles having an effect on the body’s resistance to cancer. A number of important questions remain unanswered:
1. What are circadian patterns of cortisol and melatonin at night?
2. Do stress and poor sleep cause disrupted cortisol (and other hormonal) dysregulation?
3. Does sleep disruption itself predict more rapid breast cancer progression?
We therefore propose to study coping with stress and associated sleep disruption as a prognostic factor in the progression of metastatic breast cancer, and in association with disrupted circadian patterns of cortisol, CRF, ACTH, prolactin, and melatonin, as well as measures of immune function. We plan to recruit 105 women with metastatic breast cancer and 20 age and SES-matched controls for a 28-hour sleep study in the General Clinical Research Center. This study has the potential to link mind and body in cancer through a careful examination of differences in coping with the inevitable stressors associated with cancer as they affect circadian sleep, hormonal, and immune cycles and potentially cancer progression.