CORRESPONDENCE

RESPONSE: Re: Oral Contraceptives and the Risk of Breast Cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutation Carriers

Steven Narod, Parviz Ghadirian

Affiliation of authors: Centre for Research on Women’s Health, University of Toronto and Epidemiology Research Unit, Centre hospitalier de l’Universite de Montreal.

Correspondence to: Steven Narod, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., University of Toronto, Centre for Research on Women’s Health, 790 Bay St., Toronto, Ontario M5G 1N8, Canada (e-mail: steven.narod{at}swchsc.on.ca).

Hopper and Baron point out that there was no apparent difference in the smoking histories of the breast cancer case patients and matched control subjects in our recent case–control study of breast cancer among BRCA mutations carriers (1). They ask whether this observation is consistent with our data from an earlier report of the same study population, in which we proposed that cigarette smoking protected against breast cancer in BRCA mutation carriers (2). Hopper and Baron are correct. We have re-addressed the question of smoking and breast cancer in a much larger sample of BRCA mutation carriers and now find no support for the presence of a reduced risk (3). In our analysis, smoking was reported by 41.2% of 1097 case patients and by 40.4% of matched control subjects (3). The methods of this and our earlier study (2) are almost identical, and the different results are likely due to a difference in sample size. In the rush to publish in a competitive area, it is often the case that epidemiologic studies with marginal sample sizes, but that show interesting preliminary results, are the first to reach print. The report from Leiden by de Bock et al. might be another example of this phenomenon.

NOTES

Editor’s note: The authors declined to respond to the correspondence by Rookus et al.

REFERENCES

1 Narod SA, Dube MP, Klijn J, Lubinski J, Lynch HT, Ghadirian P, et al. Oral contraceptives and the risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. J Natl Cancer Inst 2002;94:1773–9.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

2 Brunet JS, Ghadirian P, Rebbeck TR, Lerman C, Garber JE, Tonin PN, et al. Effect of smoking on breast cancer in carriers of mutant BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. J Natl Cancer Inst 1998;90:761–6.[Abstract/Free Full Text]

3 Ghadirian P, Lubinski J, Lynch HT, Neuhausen S, Weber B, Isaacs C, et al. Smoking and the risk of breast cancer among carriers of BRCA mutations. Int J Cancer. In press 2003.



             
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