Abstract
A hospital-based case-control study was conducted over 4 years in Southern France to assess the pattern of established risk factors for breast cancer and to examine its variation according to age at diagnosis. Cases studied (450) were women admitted to the Montpellier Cancer Institute, with histologically confirmed primary breast carcinoma. Controls (576) were patients from a nearby hospital admitted in the early stages of a neurological or mild psychological diseases and from a clinic for general surgery. Any patient with malignant tumours, chronic and cardiovascular diseases were excluded. The total population globally showed the commonly reported pattern for these risk factors. When stratified by age, the reproductive factors occurring early in life (menarche, first full term pregnancy) were shown to be significant risk factors only in the youngest group of patients and do not seem to influence risk in older women, for whom risk factors are those occurring later in life (menopause, obesity). This suggests a complex involvement of the reproductive and sociodemographic features with the various stages of the 'natural history' of breast cancer.
Highlights
Various risk factors for breast cancer (BC) have been recognised for many years
Cases were women aged between 26 and 66 years old with histologically confirmed primary carcinoma of the breast who were hospitalised in the Montpellier Cancer Institute and had not previously undergone any therapy
The measure of association used for evaluating effects of a potential risk factor is the odds ratios (OR), which together with their 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated following the Cornfield method (1951)
Summary
Various risk factors for breast cancer (BC) have been recognised for many years. There is agreement by most authors on a list of 'established' (Kelsey & Gammon, 1990) risk factors, made up of reproductive and menstrual variables, socioeconomic status, family history of BC and previous benign breast disease. These have been found in most countries where studies have been conducted: North America (Helmrich et al, 1983; Lubin et al, 1987); Scandinavia (reviewed in Ewertz et al, 1990); Western Europe (Talamini et al, 1985; Le et al, 1984); Eastern Europe (Plesko et al, 1985); Asia (Thein & Theen et al, 1978) and South America (Mirra et al, 1971). In several studies, there is no risk increase associated with some of these established factors (Adami et al, 1980; East European Study of BC epidemiology, 1990)
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