Highlights of This Issue

Abstract

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) may decrease lung cancer risk; however, any protective effect appears to be most evident in men. Baik and colleagues evaluated the associations between NSAID use and lung cancer incidence in postmenopausal women in the Women's Health Initiative. Compared to non-use, regular NSAID use was not associated with overall lung cancer incidence in postmenopausal women. Future studies will need to take into account the various molecular subtypes of non–small cell lung cancer to further elucidate the role of NSAIDS in lung cancer in women.Human papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling might be a promising tool to increase the effectiveness of HPV screening programs when offered to program non-attendees. However, the effectiveness could decrease if regular program attendees “switch” to self-sampling, since self-sampling test characteristics may be inferior. Rozemeijer and colleagues examined the conditions in which the harms of HPV self-sampling outweigh the benefits. The authors report that offering self-sampling will gain health effects if the relative CIN2+ sensitivity is ≥0.95, unscreened attendees are recruited, and the total attendance increases by ≥6 percentage points. Otherwise, switching of regular attendees may decrease the total effectiveness of the program.Marinac and colleagues examined associations of nighttime fasting duration with biomarkers of breast cancer risk among women in the 2009–2010 U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Each 3-hour increase in nighttime fasting was associated with a 4% lower 2-hour glucose measurement. Randomized trials are needed to confirm whether prolonged nighttime fasting could improve biomarkers of glucose control, thereby reducing breast cancer risk.Mammographic density (MD) is a strong breast cancer risk factor and to provide insight into this association, Bertrand and colleagues examined the percent MD [dense area (DA) and nondense area (NDA)] with breast cancer subtypes. Data were pooled from six studies including 4,095 breast cancers and 8,558 controls. DA was associated with increased breast cancer and NDA was associated with decreased risk across all ages and invasive tumor characteristics. DA and NDA are important to consider when developing age- and subtype-specific risk models.