Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention

BACKGROUND: Prior research linking military factors with cancer-specific mortality has shown inconsistent findings, with few studies examining these associations among United States service members and veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom (OIF/OEF) conflicts. METHODS: Cancer mortality between 2001-2018 was ascertained from the Department of Defense Medical Mortality Registry and National Death Index for 194,689 Millennium Cohort Study participants...

This review synthesized and appraised the evidence for an effect of inflammation on breast cancer risk. Systematic searches identified prospective cohort and Mendelian randomization studies relevant to this review. Meta-analysis of 13 biomarkers of inflammation were conducted to appraise the evidence for an effect breast cancer risk; we examined the dose-response of these associations. Risk of bias was evaluated using the ROBINS-E tool and the quality of evidence was appraised with Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation...

The protective effect of physical activity on breast cancer incidence may partially be mediated by inflammation. Systematic searches of Medline, EMBASE, and SPORTDiscus were performed to identify intervention studies, Mendelian randomization studies and prospective cohort studies that examined the effects of physical activity on circulating inflammatory biomarkers in adult women. Meta-analyses were performed to generate effect estimates. Risk of bias was assessed, and the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation system used to determine the overall quality of the evidence...

BACKGROUND: Early diagnosis is critical to lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients' survival but faces inadequacies in convenient early detection. METHODS: We applied a comprehensive microarray of 130,000 peptides to detect 'autoantibody signature' which is autoantibodies binding to mimotopes for early detection of stage 0-I LUAD. Plasma samples were collected from 147 early-stage LUAD (Early-LUAD), 108 benign lung disease (BLD), and 122 normal healthy controls (NHC)...

BACKGROUND: Transcriptome studies are gaining momentum in genomic epidemiology, and the need to incorporate these data in multivariable models alongside other risk factors brings demands for new approaches. METHODS: Here we describe SPECTRA, an approach to derive quantitative variables that capture the intrinsic variation in gene expression of a tissue type. We applied the SPECTRA approach to bulk RNA sequencing from malignant cells (CD138+) in patients from the Multiple Myeloma (MM) Research Foundation CoMMpass study...

BACKGROUND: Oral cavity cancer (OCC) and laryngeal cancer (LC) are among the most common cancers worldwide. This study investigated survival in non-Hispanic (NH) Black, NH White, Asian, and Hispanic OCC and LC patients of low, intermediate, and high neighborhood socioeconomic status (nSES). METHODS: We used data from the SEER 18 Census Tract-level SES and Rurality Database of the National Cancer Institute to create cohorts of OCC and LC patients from 2013-2018. Univariate survival analysis was performed with KM curves and log-rank p-values by nSES and then the cross-classification of race, ethnicity, and nSES...

BACKGROUND: More than 62 million people self-identified as Hispanic/Latino (H/L) in the 2020 United States (U.S.) Census. The U.S. H/L population has higher burden of certain cancers compared with their non-Hispanic White counterparts. METHODS: Key term search using the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Query, View and Report (QVR) system, along with Research, Condition, and Disease Categorization codes identified cancer epidemiology research grants in H/L populations funded by the U...

BACKGROUND: Children with cancer from rural and non-urban areas face unique challenges. Health equity for this population requires attention to geographic disparities in optimal survivorship-focused care. METHODS: The Oklahoma Childhood Cancer Survivor Cohort was based on all patients reported to the institutional cancer registry and <18-years-old at diagnosis between January 1, 2005, and September 24, 2014. Suboptimal follow-up was defined as no completed oncology-related clinic visit five to seven years after their initial diagnosis (survivors were 7-25 years old at end of the follow-up period)...

BACKGROUND: Engaging diverse populations in cancer genomics research is of critical importance and is a fundamental goal of the National Cancer Institute Participant Engagement and Cancer Genome Sequencing (PE-CGS) Network. Established as part of the Cancer Moonshot, PE-CGS is a consortium of stakeholders including clinicians, scientists, genetic counselors, and representatives of potential study participants and their communities. Participant engagement is an ongoing, bi-directional, and mutually beneficial interaction between study participants and researchers...

BACKGROUND: Better understanding of prognostic factors in tubo-ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) is critical, as diagnosis confers an aggressive disease course. Variation in tumor DNA methylation shows promise predicting outcome, yet prior studies were largely platform-specific and unable to evaluate multiple molecular features. METHODS: We analyzed genome-wide DNA methylation in 1,040 frozen HGSC, including 325 previously reported upon, seeking a multi-platform quantitative methylation signature that we evaluated in relation to clinical features, tumor characteristics, time to recurrence/death, extent of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL), gene expression molecular subtypes, and gene expression of the ATP-binding cassette transporter TAP1...

BACKGROUND: The Canadian Cancer Registry does not collect demographic data beyond age and sex, making it difficult to monitor health inequalities. Using data linkage, we compared site-specific cancer incidence rates by race. METHODS: The 2006 and 2011 Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohorts are population-based probabilistically linked datasets of 5.9 million respondents of the 2006 long-form census and 6.5 million respondents of the 2011 National Household Survey...

BACKGROUND: Little is known regarding factors associated with calcitriol and a relative measure of calcitriol, the calcitriol-24,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-calcifediol proportion ratio (C24CPR). METHODS: Using a cross-sectional study design, healthy young adults of African and European descent, matched (1:1) on age (+/- 5 years) provided a blood sample in non-summer months (N=376). Vitamin D metabolites were measured in plasma with high performance liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC/MS-MS)...

BACKGROUND: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is linked to multiple cancers, including classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL), endemic Burkitt lymphoma (eBL), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), and extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma (NKTCL). METHODS: Anti-EBV IgG and IgA antibody responses targeting 202 sequences from 86 EBV proteins were measured using the same EBV whole proteome array across four case-control studies investigating EBV-positive cHL, eBL, NPC and NKTCL (407 cases/620 controls)...

BACKGROUND: DNA methylation patterning is cell-type-specific and altered DNA methylation is well established to occur early in breast carcinogenesis, affecting non-cancerous, histopathologically normal breast tissue. Previous work assessing risk factor-associated alterations to DNA methylation in breast tissue has been limited, with even less published research in breast milk, a non-invasively obtained biospecimen containing sloughed mammary epithelial cells that may identify early alterations indicative of cancer risk...

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer incidence rates in women of Asian descent have been increasing in the United States (U.S.) and Asia. METHODS: In a case-control study of Asian American women from the San Francisco Bay Area, we assessed associations with birthplace and migration-related characteristics and compared risk factors between Asian American and non-Hispanic White women by birthplace and birth cohort. RESULTS: Birthplace and migration-related characteristics were associated with breast cancer risk only among women in the younger birth cohort (1951-1984) that comprised 355 cases diagnosed at age ≤55 years and 276 sister and population controls...

BACKGROUND: Dyslipidemia is closely associated with metabolic syndrome, a known risk factor for colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the association of dyslipidemia with CRC risk is controversial. Most previous studies did not consider cholesterol-lowering medication use at the time of lipid measurements, which could bias findings. METHODS: We analyzed data from 384,862 UK Biobank participants to disentangle the associations between blood lipids and CRC risk. Serum levels of total cholesterol, high- and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C, LDL-C), and triglyceride were measured at study baseline...

Background Head and Neck cancer (HNC) mortality differs by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES). However, it is unclear whether the relationship between race/ethnicity and HNC-specific mortality varies according to the residence-level SES. Methods: Data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database included participants with primary HNC between 2006-2017 (followed through 2018) to assess the joint association of race/ethnicity and census-tract level SES Yost-index groups (quintiles) with all-cause and HNC-specific mortalities...

BACKGROUND: Racial segregation is linked to poorer neighborhood quality and adverse health conditions among minorities, including worse cancer outcomes. We evaluated relationships between race, neighborhood social disadvantage, and cancer survival. METHODS: We calculated overall and cancer-specific survival for 11,367 non-Hispanic Black (NHB) and 29,481 non-Hispanic White (NHW) individuals with breast, colorectal, lung, or prostate cancer using data from the Metropolitan Detroit Cancer Surveillance System...

BACKGROUND: Different survival metrics have different applicability to clinical practice and research. We evaluated how choice of survival metric influences assessment of cancer survival among American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people relative to non-Hispanic Whites (NHW). A secondary objective was to present variations in survival among AIAN people by age, sex, stage, and Indian Health Service (IHS) region. METHODS: Five-year survival was calculated using the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries Cancer in North America dataset...

BACKGROUND: Metastatic prostate cancer (MPC) includes metastases detected at diagnosis (de novo) and those occurring after diagnosis with early-stage disease (recurrent). Cancer registries collect data only on de novo MPC, providing a partial picture of the burden of MPC. We use cancer registry data to estimate the number of men living with MPC in the US including both de novo and recurrent cases. METHODS: We apply a back-calculation method to estimate MPC incidence and prevalence from US prostate cancer (PC) mortality and de novo MPC relative survival for cases diagnosed between 2000-2017 in 18 Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results registries...