International head and neck cancer epidemiology consortium: Update no. 5

✍ Scribed by Sturgis, Erich M. (editor)

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 44 KB
• Volume: 34
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1043-3074
• DOI: 10.1002/hed.21994

✦ Synopsis

The International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium (http://inhance.iarc.fr) was established in 2004 to study the cause 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 also supported through the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Presently, INHANCE includes more than 35 studies, which when taken collectively provide questionnaire data on more than 25,000 cases and more than 35,000 control subjects and biologic 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 control subjects are persons without cancer used for comparison. 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.