WEDNESDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthDay News) -- Women with lobular breast cancer are nearly twice as likely as those with other forms of breast cancer to have a father who had cancer, especially prostate cancer, a new study finds.

Swedish researchers examined the family history, pathology reports and hospital records of women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1980 and 2008. About 40 percent of the women had invasive ductal breast cancer and 8 percent had lobular cancer, which starts in the lobules, the parts of the breast that produce milk.

When they were diagnosed, 21 percent of the breast cancer patients had a mother who'd been diagnosed with cancer and 15 percent had a father who'd been diagnosed with cancer, the investigators found.

After adjusting for a number of factors, the researchers concluded that women with a father who'd been diagnosed with cancer were nearly two times more likely to have lobular breast cancer than any other type of breast cancer, according to the report published in the Nov. 28 online edition of the journal BMC Cancer.

"We also looked at grandparents and other family members, but the increased risk of lobular cancer was directly linked to having a father with cancer. This does not necessarily mean that the daughter of a man diagnosed with cancer is more likely to get lobular breast cancer -- it means that if she develops breast cancer it is more likely to be lobular," study author Carolina Ellberg, of Lund University, said in a journal news release.

Previous research has shown that the risk of breast cancer is higher in women with certain genetic and lifestyle factors, such as having the BRCA2 gene, having a first child at an older age, or the use of hormone replacement therapy.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about breast cancer.