Possible relationship between menopause and age at onset of breast cancer

✍ Scribed by Elving Anderson; Sheldon C. Reed; Robert A. Huseby; Clarence P. Oliver

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1950
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 367 KB
• Volume: 3
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-543X
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-0142(1950)3:3<410::aid-cncr2820030303>3.0.co;2-h

✦ Synopsis

the age at onset of breast cancer is significant for clinical diagnosis and treatment. I t is possible that this information may also aid in establishing the factors and the time relationships in the etiology of breast cancer. This may be particularly true with regard to the period of the menopause and its associated hormonal changes.

DATA

It is clear that age distributions that are based on mortality statistics are not adequate for this purpose because the length of survival varies greatly for different individuals and some patients die from other causes. For these reasons, morbidity statistics are much more accurate, and the discussion will be limited to them.

In those studies that have information on the age at onset of the breast cancer, a number of the age distributions assume the form of a unimodal curve. Among these are the following: Taylor tabulated the data from eleven authors in ten-year age periods and found a single peak at approximately ages 47 to 53 years. Harrington and Geschickter published data with a single peak at ages 45 to 49 years. The studies by Lane-Claypon and by Wainwright showed similar curves.

More recent data indicate that the distribution of age at onset may not form a unimodal From the Dight Institute for Human Genetics,