Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0006142 (breast cancer)
 160,383 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Controversy exists concerning the health risks from exposures to radiofrequency/microwave irradiation (RF/MW). The authors report exposure-effect relationships in sentinel patients and their co-workers, who were technicians with high levels of exposure to RF/MW radiation. Information about exposures of patients with sentinel tumors was obtained from interviews, medical records, and technical sources. One patient was a member of a cohort of 25 workers with six tumors. The authors estimated relative risks for cancer in this group and latency periods for a larger group of self-reported individuals. Index patients with melanoma of the eye, testicular cancer, nasopharyngioma, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and breast cancer were in the 20-37-year age group. Information about work conditions suggested prolonged exposures to high levels of RF/MW radiation that produced risks for the entire body. Clusters involved many different types of tumors. Latency periods were extremely brief in index patients and a larger self-reported group. The findings suggest that young persons exposed to high levels of RF/MW radiation for long periods in settings where preventive measures were lax were at increased risk for cancer. Very short latency periods suggest high risks from high-level exposures. Calculations derived from a linear model of dose-response suggest the need to prevent exposures in the range of 10-100 microw/cm(2).
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PMID:Cancer in radar technicians exposed to radiofrequency/microwave radiation: sentinel episodes. 1092 22

Individuals with Down syndrome have an increased risk of leukaemia, but reliable estimates of the age-specific risk of leukaemia are lacking and very little is known about the risk of solid tumours. We identified 2814 individuals with Down syndrome from the Danish Cytogenetic Register, and linked the data to the Danish Cancer Registry. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated on the basis of age- and sex-specific cancer rates in the general population. Sixty cases of cancer were observed, with 49.8 expected (SIR = 1.20; CI: 0.92-1.55). Leukaemia constituted 60% of the malignancies overall and 97% of the malignancies in children. The SIR for leukaemia varied considerably with age, being 56 (CI: 38-81) at age 0-4 years and 10 (CI: 4-20) at 5-29 years. No cases of leukaemia were observed after age 29. The cumulative risk of leukaemia by the age of 5 years was 2.1% and that by 30 years was 2.7%. Only 24 solid tumours were observed with 47.8 expected (SIR = 0.50; CI: 0.32-0.75). No cases of breast cancer were observed, with 7.3 expected (p = 0.0007). Increased risks of testicular cancer, ovarian cancer, and retinoblastoma were observed but were not statistically significant. The occurrence of cancer in Down syndrome is unique with a high risk of leukaemia in children and a decreased risk of solid tumours in all age groups. The distinctive pattern of malignancies may provide clues in the search for leukaemogenic genes and tumour suppressor genes on chromosome 21.
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PMID:[Occurrence of cancer in individuals with Down syndrome]. 1098 Dec 21

A cohort of offspring of mothers with breast or ovarian cancer diagnosed in 1958-1993 was established using Swedish population-based registers. The children (n = 158,041) were born between 1941 and 1993, and their cancer incidence was followed between 1961 and 1993. A total of 3,257 tumors in 3,102 children were found. Observed numbers of cases were compared with expected numbers based on national calendar year-, age-, and sex-specific incidences. For daughters of women with breast cancer, the standardized morbidity ratios for being diagnosed with breast cancer and ovarian cancer before age 50 years were 1.99 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.86, 2.14) and 1.28 (95% CI: 1.05, 1.54), respectively. The corresponding figures for daughters of women with ovarian cancer were 1.79 (95% CI: 1.55, 2.07) and 2.38 (95% CI: 1.77, 3.12). The risks were raised if the mother's cancer was diagnosed at a young age, the mother had multiple breast/ovarian diagnoses, or there was a sister with breast/ovarian cancer. Among all offspring, increased risks were found for thyroid cancer, testicular cancer, and malignant melanoma, while lung cancer risk was decreased if the mother had had breast cancer. The authors developed a variance estimator for the standardized morbidity ratio to cope with overdispersion due to dependency within families.
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PMID:Familial breast and ovarian cancer: a Swedish population-based register study. 1113 Jun 21

Individuals with Down syndrome have an increased risk of leukaemia, but reliable estimates of the age-specific risk of leukaemia are lacking and very little is known about the risk of solid tumours. We identified 2814 individuals with Down syndrome from the Danish Cytogenetic Register, and linked the data to the Danish Cancer Registry. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated on the basis of age- and sex-specific cancer rates in the general population. Sixty cases of cancer were observed, with 49.8 expected (SIR = 1.20; CI: 0.92-1.55). Leukaemia constituted 60% of the malignancies overall and 97% of the malignancies in children. The SIR for leukaemia varied considerably with age, being 56 (CI: 38-81) at age 0-4 years and 10 (CI: 4-20) at 5-29 years. No cases of leukaemia were observed after age 29. The cumulative risk of leukaemia by the age of 5 years was 2.1% and that by 30 years was 2.7%. Only 24 solid tumours were observed with 47.8 expected (SIR = 0.50; CI: 0.32-0.75). No cases of breast cancer were observed, with 7.3 expected (p = 0.0007). Increased risks of testicular cancer, ovarian cancer, and retinoblastoma were observed but were not statistically significant. The occurrence of cancer in Down syndrome is unique with a high risk of leukaemia in children and a decreased risk of solid tumours in all age groups. The distinctive pattern of malignancies may provide clues in the search for leukaemogenic genes and tumour suppressor genes on chromosome 21.
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PMID:[Incidence of cancer in individuals with Down syndrome]. 1114 9

There are grounds for suspecting that, to varying degrees, smoking, alcohol consumption, oral contraceptive use, vasectomy and induced abortion are markers for high steroid hormone levels. So in epidemiological studies, false inferences may be drawn that these markers (treated as risk factors) have causal or exacerbating effects on diseases which are truly partially caused by high levels of hormones (e.g. probably prostatic cancer and breast cancer). Analogously, such studies of conditions which are truly partially caused by low levels of hormones (e.g. bone fractures, poor sperm quality, and perhaps testicular cancer and rheumatoid arthritis) may yield spurious suggestions of an ameliorative effect. The results of epidemiological studies of the above five "risk factors" for the above six pathologies are-in many cases-in striking disarray. I suggest that this is, at least partially, because of this form of confounding. The point may be tested by contrasting the hormone levels of people who self-select for smoking, vasectomy, etc., at the time that self-selection is made with those of appropriately selected control subjects.
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PMID:Hypothesis: gonadal hormones act as confounders in epidemiological studies of the associations between some behavioural risk factors and some pathological conditions. 1123 73

We used the Swedish Family-Cancer Database to analyse the effects of birth order and family size on the risk of common cancers among offspring born over the period 1958-96. Some 1.38 million offspring up to age 55 years with 50.6 million person-years were included. Poisson regression analysis included age at diagnosis, birth cohort, socio-economic status and region of residence as other explanatory variables. The only significant associations were an increasing risk for breast cancer by birth order and a decreasing risk for melanoma by birth order and, particularly, by family size. When details of the women's own reproductive history were included in analysis, birth orders 5-17 showed a relative risk of 1.41. The effects on breast cancer may be mediated through increasing birth weight by birth order. For melanoma, socio-economic factors may be involved, such as limited affordability of sun tourism in large families. Testis cancer showed no significant effect and prostate cancer was excluded from analysis because of the small number of cases.
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PMID:Birth order, family size, and the risk of cancer in young and middle-aged adults. 1138 95

Nontraumatic osteonecrosis is a well-documented late complication of chemotherapy for hematologic malignancies, with prolonged corticosteroid exposure implicated. Reports of this treatment complication in patients treated with chemotherapy for solid tumors are sparse. We reviewed our institutional experience and the published medical literature to explore an association between chemotherapy for testicular cancer and the occurrence of nontraumatic osteonecrosis. Two databases of men with testicular cancer were reviewed. Search of the medical literature included MEDLINE, CANCERLIT, and EMBASE. Two of 107 men with testicular cancer treated with chemotherapy at our center were identified with nontraumatic osteonecrosis. Literature review identified 14 reports describing patients with 39 solid tumors with osteonecrosis after chemotherapy. Of 38 adults, 28 had testicular cancer and 6 had breast cancer. All patients with testicular cancer had received cisplatin, vinblastine, and bleomycin, or bleomycin, etoposide, and cisplatin. Twenty-seven of 28 had received corticosteroids. Diagnosis was subacute in three and delayed a mean of 26 months (range, 12-47 months) in 26. The femoral head was involved in 26 patients, with bilateral involvement in 18. Crude incidence was 1.5% (95% CI, 0.9-2.1). Nontraumatic osteonecrosis is an infrequent but disabling late complication of cancer chemotherapy reported most commonly in adult patients with testicular cancer. Corticosteroid exposure makes this association plausible.
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PMID:Nontraumatic osteonecrosis after chemotherapy for testicular cancer: a systematic review. 1180 63

The kallikrein gene family is comprised of genes that have either established or potential applications in prostate and breast cancer diagnostics. New members of the human kallikrein gene family have been recently identified. By using the positional candidate gene approach, we were able to clone a novel human serine protease gene that maps to chromosome 19q13.3-q13.4, the location of the kallikrein gene family. We named this gene KLK-L4 (now also known as KLK13). Here, we describe the identification of five new KLK-L4 splice variants which are not expressed in any other tissue except the human testis. We have further established that these splice variants can be detected in normal testis but not in the adjacent matched testicular tumors. In addition, differential expression of the KLK-L4 gene was found in various histological types of testicular cancer. Our results suggest that the KLK-L4 gene is expressed in normal and cancerous testicular tissue; however, its five variants are all expressed in normal tissue but not in testicular tumors. The physiological relevance of these variants and the implications of their differential expression between cancerous and normal tissues are currently unknown.
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PMID:Identification and molecular characterization of five novel kallikrein gene 13 (KLK13; KLK-L4) splice variants: differential expression in the human testis and testicular cancer. 1184 66

Body surface area-dosing does not account for the complex processes of cytotoxic drug elimination. This leads to an unpredictable variation in effect. Overdosing is easily recognised but it is possible that unrecognised underdosing is more common and may occur in 30% or more of patients receiving standard regimen. Those patients who are inadvertently underdosed are at risk of a significantly reduced anticancer effect. Using published data, it can be calculated that there is an almost 20% relative reduction in survival for women receiving adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer as a result of unrecognised underdosing. Similarly, the cure rate of cisplatin-based chemotherapy for advanced testicular cancer may be reduced by as much as 10%. The inaccuracy of body surface area-dosing is more than an inconvenience and it is important that methods for more accurate dose calculation are determined, based on the known drug elimination processes for cytotoxic chemotherapy. Twelve rules for dose calculation of chemotherapy are given that can be used as a guideline until better dose-calculation methods become available. Consideration should be given to using fixed dose guidelines independent of body surface area and based on drug elimination capability, both as a starting dose and for dose adjustment, which may have accuracy, safety and financial advantages.
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PMID:How to calculate the dose of chemotherapy. 1195 73

Twin studies on cancer have addressed two general questions, one about the possible carcinogenic effects of twinning and the second about heritable effects of cancer. The first question is answered by comparing the occurrence of cancer in twins to that in singletons; the second is answered in probandwise analysis of monozygotic twins compared to dizygotic twins or siblings. We used the nationwide Swedish Family-Cancer Database on 10.2 million individuals and 62,574 0-66-year-old twins to calculate standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for all main cancer compared to cancer in singletons. In probandwise analysis, the SIR was calculated for the co-twin of an affected twin. The overall risk of cancer in same or opposite sex twins was at the level of the risk for singletons. Testicular cancer was increased among same sex twins and all twins to an SIR of 1.43. Melanoma was decreased in these groups of twins to an SIR of 0.84. Some other cancer sites were increased or decreased in some groups of twins, but none in all twins. The SIR of breast cancer was 1.01 and 1.04 in same and opposite sex twins, respectively. Probandwise analysis showed increased risks for Hodgkin's disease in males and breast cancer and childhood acute lymphoid leukemia among females. The data on this unselected population of twins suggest that twinning per se is not a risk factor of cancer. However, because twins are smaller than singletons at birth, some possible effects could be masked by such differences. In utero hormonal exposures may be related to the risk of testicular cancer. The protective effects in melanoma may be due to socioeconomic factors.
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PMID:Cancer risks in twins: results from the Swedish family-cancer database. 1211 91


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