Cancer Clusters

["Zack Clayton" <zack.clayton@EPA.STATE.OH.US>]

This is only peripherally related to Radiation, but could be related to

dose reconstruction and exposure.  Just something to consider as food

for thought.



http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/06/030611080900.htm 





Source:  

University At Buffalo



Date:  

2003-06-11

 

GIS Technology Helps Link Premenopausal Breast Cancer With Place Of

Birth, Residence At Time Of Menarche



BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Geographers and epidemiologists from the University at

Buffalo, using life-course data from a cohort of breast cancer patients

and controls in Western New York and geographic information systems

(GIS) technology, have shown that women who developed breast cancer

before menopause tend to cluster based on where they were born and where

they lived at their menarche (start of menstruation). The clustering

indicates that these women may have been exposed to something in the

environment at those times in their lives that increased their risk of

developing premenopausal breast cancer, said Daikwon Han, Ph.D.,

postdoctoral fellow in the UB Department of Social and Preventive

Medicine and first author on the study. There was less evidence of

clustering of postmenopausal cancer cases, he said. Han will present the

study results June 12 at the annual meeting of the Society for

Epidemiologic Research in Atlanta. "Researchers are moving more toward a

life-course approach in studying the development of chronic disease,"

said Han. "At UB, we are developing spatial statistical methods to

combine geographic information systems, mapping and visualization with

epidemiology to help identify patterns of disease."



Finding clustering of cancer patients based on where they were born and

lived during early life is significant, said Peter Rogerson, Ph.D., UB

professor of geography and a study co-author. "If we just look at where

the women lived when they were diagnosed, we miss something important."



The study positioned the clustering of premenopausal cases in an area

near the border between Erie and Niagara counties in Western New York.



The project piggybacks on a case-control study of breast cancer in Erie

and Niagara counties led by Jo L. Freudenheim, Ph.D., professor and

interim chair of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the

UB School of Public Health and Health Professions. It involves 1,170

women with recently diagnosed breast cancer and 2,116 healthy women. Of

this total, about half were born in either of the two counties and had

provided the address of their residence at birth and menarche, and

became the focus of the current project.



In future studies, the researchers will combine the GIS results with

information on the location of steel mills, chemical factories, gasoline

stations, toxic-waste sites and other industrial sites in existence in

the two counties between 1918-80. They then will calculate the distance

between these sites and the women's homes at the time of birth and

menarche, and compare this information for the participants with and

without cancer.



Also contributing to the research were Matthew Bonner Ph.D.,

postdoctoral fellow; Jing Nie, graduate student; John E. Vena, Ph.D.,

professor, and Paola Muti, M.D., associate professor, all of the

Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the UB School of Public

Health and Health Professions, and Maurizio Trevisan, M.D., professor of

social and preventive medicine and interim dean of the school.



The research was supported by grants from the Department of Defense

Breast Cancer Research Program and the National Institutes of Health.





************************************************************************

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.

You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/