International head and neck cancer epidemiology consortium: Update no. 4

✍ Scribed by Erich M. Sturgis

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 46 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1043-3074
• DOI: 10.1002/hed.21875

✦ Synopsis

The International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium (http://inhance.iarc.fr) was established in 2004 to study the etiology of head and neck cancer by pooling individual subject data from its member epidemiologic studies, most of which are of case-control design. INHANCE is coordinated through the University of Utah School of Medicine and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, and is also supported through the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Presently, INHANCE includes over 35 studies that, when taken collectively, provide questionnaire data on over 25,000 cases and over 35,000 controls, and biological samples from a majority of the study populations. Cases are patients with cancers (>97% squamous cell carcinomas) of the oral cavity, oropharynx, hypopharynx, and larynx, whereas controls are for comparison persons without cancer. The consortium combined questionnaire data into a centralized database with standardization to allow for pooled analyses. The database includes sociodemographic, behavioral, lifestyle, and health fields in addition to biomarker data (chiefly human papillomavirus and genetic) on a major subset. This section will provide periodic updates from INHANCE with an executive summary of a publication along with the abstract.