A recent research has found that girls who remain heavier during their childhood are less likely to develop breast cancer later in their lives. The studs analyzed as many as 189,000 women, enrolled under the Nurses' Health Study.

They were asked about their body weight at the age of 5, 10 and 20 years, using pictograms.

It was found that the larger body weight at all the 3 age marks and especially during adolescence was linked to a significantly lesser risk of breast cancer in the present age of the women.

Lead author Heather Baer, an Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and an instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School said that the exact causes of the findings haven’t been identified yet, but there is a possibility that slow puberty development in heavier girls contributes to the reduced rate of breast cancer.

Overweight girls mostly go through anovulatory cycles wherein an egg isn't released.

"This doesn't mean that it's good to be heavy at young ages -- being heavy is associated with increased risk of numerous [other] conditions," Baer said.

She added that the recent findings have triggered the need of analyzing the relation between overweight and reduced breast cancer rates.