'Most people don't think of men as having breasts' " Many people don't know that men can get breast cancer because they don't think of men as having breasts ," Jackie Harris, clinical nurse specialist at UK charity Breast Cancer Care. "In fact, both men and women have breast tissue, although men have much smaller amounts than women." Until puberty, both young girls and boys have small amounts of breast tissue consisting of lobules (glands than can produce milk), ducts (small tubes that carry milk from the lobules to the nipple) and stroma (fatty and connective tissue). When girls reach puberty, high levels of the female hormone estrogen cause substantial growth in lobules, ducts and stroma, producing full breasts.
Because boys and men have low levels of estrogen, they are very unlikely to form fully grown breasts. However, what breast tissue a man has still contains ducts, and cells in…
