Premium
Parity and the risk of pancreatic cancer: A nested case‐control study
Author(s) -
Karlson BrittMarie,
Wuu Joanne,
Hsieh Chungcheng,
Lambe Mats,
Ekbom Anders
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
international journal of cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.475
H-Index - 234
eISSN - 1097-0215
pISSN - 0020-7136
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1097-0215(19980717)77:2<224::aid-ijc10>3.0.co;2-b
Subject(s) - pancreatic cancer , medicine , confounding , parity (physics) , case control study , cancer , risk factor , nested case control study , pregnancy , obstetrics , gynecology , demography , biology , physics , particle physics , sociology , genetics
Smoking is the only generally accepted risk factor for pancreatic cancer. Reproductive history has in recent studies been associated with pancreatic cancer, but with contradictory results. In order to evaluate a possible association between age at first birth and the number of births and pancreatic cancer, we conducted a nested case‐control study by linking 2 Swedish nationwide registries: the Cancer Registry and The Fertility Registry. Among women born between 1925 and 1970, 1,015 patients with pancreatic cancer were compared with 5,073 age‐matched controls. No association between pancreatic cancer and number of births was found. Age at first birth was inversely related with the risk of pancreatic cancer (OR per 5 years = 0.90; 95% CI 0.83<0R>–<0B>0.97; p <0B> = 0.01), an association mainly confined to women with a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer before 50 years of age (OR per 5 years = 0.85; 95% CI 0.73<0R>–<0B>1.00; p <0B> = 0.04). This trend remained after adjustment for parity, but was less prominent. Young age at first birth and high parity in Sweden are, however, associated with an increased frequency of smoking, thus at least some of the increased risk for pancreatic cancer in women with young age at first birth is likely to be explained by smoking acting as a confounder. Int. J. Cancer 77:224–227, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.