American Association for Cancer Research

July 2007 CEBP Highlights

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Selected Articles from the July 2007 Issue

The articles referenced in this Highlights section will be available online in HTML and PDF formats to all interested users at no charge until the next issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention is published. Click on the article title to view the complete article.

View the Table of Contents for the July 2007 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.


n-3 Fatty Acids Associated with Reduced Risk of Prostate Cancer

Chavarro et al.

Page 1364

Animal models suggest that n-3 fatty acids inhibit prostate cancer proliferation while n-6 fatty acids promote it, but epidemiologic studies do not uniformly support these findings. Chavarro and colleagues conducted a nested case-control study among 14,916 apparently healthy men who provided blood samples in 1982. Blood fatty acid levels were determined for 476 men diagnosed with prostate cancer during a 13-year follow-up and their matched controls. Higher blood levels of long chain n-3 fatty acids, mainly found in marine foods, and of linoleic acid, mainly found in non-hydrogenated vegetable oils, were associated with a reduced risk of prostate cancer. The direct associations of linoleic acid metabolites with prostate cancer risk deserve further investigation.
 

No Association between Fertility Drugs and Breast Cancer Risk

Jensen et al.

Page 1400

Few epidemiological studies have examined the association between fertility drugs and breast cancer risk, and results have been contradictory. Using data from the largest cohort of infertile women to date, Jensen and colleagues examined the effects of fertility drugs on breast cancer risk overall and according to histological subtypes. The results showed no association between breast cancer risk and use of fertility drugs. Follow-up is needed to assess long-term breast cancer risk after use of progesterone and among nulliparous women exposed to gonadotrophins.


Pathologic Confirmation Critical in Pancreatic Studies

Verhage et al.

Page 1449

In epidemiologic studies of pancreatic cancer, contrary to other forms of cancer, microscopic (or cytohistologic) confirmation is often lacking for more than 30–40% of all cases. Cases without microscopic confirmation are often included in these studies, but may reflect different subtypes of pancreatic cancer or even non–pancreatic cancer. The study by Verhage and associates illustrates that including cases without pathologic confirmation may lead to spurious conclusions; including these cases obscured the association between body mass index and pancreatic cancer risk, which is clearly present among verified cases only. The authors emphasized that the practice of including non-verified cases in epidemiologic studies is very important because conflicting results are reported on many associations with pancreatic cancer risk.


Obesity Linked to Multiple Myeloma Risk

Birmann et al.

Page 1474

Multiple myeloma is the second most common hematopoietic malignancy, but its etiology remains poorly understood. The identification of modifiable risk factors for this disease is particularly urgent given that 5-year survival rates are well below 40%. Several population-based studies suggested that body mass index (BMI) or energy balance is a potentially modifiable risk factor. Birmann and colleagues further examined the role of energy balance in the etiology of multiple myeloma through prospective analyses of the relation of both BMI and physical activity with risk. The authors observed a positive association of BMI with multiple myeloma (consistent with previous publications) that appears to be independent of physical activity. Obesity appears to have an etiologic role in multiple myeloma, but the role of other correlates of energy balance remains uncertain.


BRCA1 may Play Role in Prostate Cancer

Douglas et al.

Page 1510

Rare, inactivating mutations in the BRCA1 gene appear to play a limited role in prostate cancer. Douglas and colleagues used family-based association tests and conditional logistic regression to investigate the association between prostate cancer and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) tagging common haplotype variation in a 200 kb-region surrounding (and including) the BRCA1 gene. The strongest evidence for prostate cancer association was for a glutamine-to-arginine substitution at codon 356 (Gln356Arg) in exon 11 of the BRCA1 gene. Thus, the authors identified a common, non-synonymous substitution in the BRCA1 gene that is associated with and linked to prostate cancer.