Hopper JL, et al. - Experts evaluated whether the association between body mass index (BMI) and risk of breast cancer is dependent on a woman’s familial risk. Study participants included 6,035 women from 6,701 families in the Breast Cancer Family Registry and the Kathleen Cunningham Foundation Consortium for Research into Familial Breast Cancer who were followed for up to 20 years. There were 896 incident breast cancers. The investigators used Cox regression to model BMI risk associations as a function of menopausal status, age, and underlying familial risk according to pedigree data using the Breast and Ovarian Analysis of Disease Incidence and Carrier Estimation Algorithm, all measured at baseline. They found that familial risk of a woman was directly proportional to the influence of BMI on her absolute postmenopausal breast cancer risk. Given that age-adjusted BMI is correlated across adulthood, the authors indicated that maintaining a healthy weight throughout adult life is especially important for women with a family history of breast cancer.