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Abstract

Title: Early- and late-onset breast cancer types among women in the United States and Japan.
Author: Matsuno RK, Anderson WF, Yamamoto S, Tsukuma H, Pfeiffer RM, Kobayashi K, Devesa SS, Levine PH
Journal: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 16(7):1437-1442
Year: 2007
Month: July

Abstract: BACKGROUND: Although differences in breast cancer incidence among Occidental and Asian populations are often attributed to variations in environmental exposures and/or lifestyle, fewer studies have systematically examined the effect of age-related variations. METHODS: To further explore age-related geographic breast cancer variations, we compared age-specific incidence patterns among cases of female invasive breast cancer from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program and the Osaka Cancer Registry (1978-1997). RESULTS: In SEER, there were 236,130 Whites, 21,137 Blacks, and 3,304 Japanese-Americans in Hawaii with invasive breast cancer. In Osaka, there were 25,350 cases. Incidence rates per 100,000 woman-years ranged from 87.6 among Whites to 21.8 in Osaka. Age-specific incidence rates increased rapidly until age 50 years for all race/ethnicity groups, and then continued to increase more slowly for Whites, Blacks, and Japanese-Americans in Hawaii but plateaud for Osaka. Age-specific incidence rates in SEER reflected bimodal (early-onset and late-onset) breast cancer populations, whereas Osaka had only an early-onset age distribution. These age-specific differences in incidence among SEER and Osaka persisted after adjustment for calendar-period and birth-cohort effects using age-period-cohort models. CONCLUSIONS: Results confirm striking age-specific differences among Occidental and native Japanese breast cancer populations, probably due to complex age-related biological and/or environmental variations among Occidental and Asian breast cancer populations.