The blood transcriptome prior to ovarian cancer diagnosis: A case-control study in the NOWAC postgenome cohort.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) has a 5-year relative survival of 50%, partly because markers of early-stage disease are not available in current clinical diagnostics. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether EOC is associated with transcriptional profiles in blood collected up to 7 years before diagnosis. For this, we used RNA-stabilized whole blood, which contains circulating immune cells, from a sample of EOC cases from the population-based Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) postgenome cohort.

High lactose whey cheese consumption and risk of colorectal cancer - The Norwegian Women and Cancer Study.

The incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC) has increased among Norwegian women, and is among the highest in the world. In order to understand this increase, country specific dietary exposures have been investigated. The aim of this study was to quantify the association between consumption of brown cheese, a common bread topping in Norway, and colorectal, colon, and rectal cancer in the prospective Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) Study.

Levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system use is associated with a decreased risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer, without increased risk of breast cancer. Results from the NOWAC Study.

Objective: Women with ovarian cancer have poor survival rates, which have proven difficult to improve; therefore primary prevention is important. The levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUS) prevents endometrial cancer, and recent studies suggested that it may also prevent ovarian cancer, but with a concurrent increased risk of breast cancer. We compared adjusted risks of ovarian, endometrial, and breast cancer in ever users and never users of LNG-IUS.

Does an epidemiological comparison support a common cellular lineage for similar subtypes of postmenopausal uterine and ovarian carcinoma? The Norwegian Women and Cancer Study.

Uterine and ovarian carcinomas have the same major histological subtypes, but whether they originate from the same cell types is a matter of ongoing debate. Uterine and ovarian endometrioid and clear cell carcinoma (ECC) and uterine and ovarian serous carcinoma (SC) may originate in the same location, or share a common lineage of differentiation. Epidemiologically, a common cellular lineage should be reflected in similar risk associations, and we explored the similarity of uterine and ovarian ECC and uterine and ovarian SC.

Correlates of circulating ovarian cancer early detection markers and their contribution to discrimination of early detection models: results from the EPIC cohort.

Background: Ovarian cancer early detection markers CA125, CA15.3, HE4, and CA72.4 vary between healthy women, limiting their utility for screening.

Physical activity and risk of endometrial cancer in the Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) study.

Few studies have investigated the association between endometrial cancer and physical activity (PA) using repeated measures of PA and different subtypes of endometrial cancer. We aimed to investigate the association between endometrial cancer and PA level at two points in time in women with different body mass index (BMI) profiles, and to calculate the population attributable fraction (PAF) of endometrial cancer for low PA levels. We included 82,759 women with complete information on PA at baseline in the Norwegian Women and Cancer Study; 52,370 had follow-up information on PA.

Coffee consumption and the risk of malignant melanoma in the Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) Study.

Background: Coffee contains biologically-active substances that suppress carcinogenesis in vivo, and coffee consumption has been associated with a lower risk of malignant melanoma. We studied the impact of total coffee consumption and of different brewing methods on the incidence of malignant melanoma in a prospective cohort of Norwegian women.

Methods: We had baseline information on total coffee consumption and consumption of filtered, instant, and boiled coffee from self-administered questionnaires for 104,080 women in the Norwegian Women and Cancer (NOWAC) Study.

Epithelial ovarian cancer subtypes attributable to smoking in the Norwegian Women and Cancer Study, 2012.

Among European women, ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer. Smoking is an established risk factor for mucinous tumors. We estimated the impact of smoking in Norwegian women using population attributable fractions (PAFs) of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), by invasiveness and by histological subtypes in the Norwegian Women and Cancer Study with an average of 13.

Kvik: three-tier data exploration tools for flexible analysis of genomic data in epidemiological studies.

Kvik is an open-source framework that we developed for explorative analysis of functional genomics data from large epidemiological studies. Creating such studies requires a significant amount of time and resources. It is therefore usual to reuse the data from one study for several research projects.

Nutrient-wide association study of 57 foods/nutrients and epithelial ovarian cancer in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study and the Netherlands Cohort Study.

Background: Studies of the role of dietary factors in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) development have been limited, and no specific dietary factors have been consistently associated with EOC risk.

Objective: We used a nutrient-wide association study approach to systematically test the association between dietary factors and invasive EOC risk while accounting for multiple hypothesis testing by using the false discovery rate and evaluated the findings in an independent cohort.

Design: We assessed dietary intake amounts of 28 foods/food groups and 29 nutrients estimated by using dietary questionnaires in the EPIC (European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition) study (n = 1095 cases).

Reproductive factors and epithelial ovarian cancer survival in the EPIC cohort study.

Background: Reproductive factors influence the risk of developing epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), but little is known about their association with survival. We tested whether prediagnostic reproductive factors influenced EOC-specific survival among 1025 invasive EOC cases identified in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which included 521,330 total participants (approximately 370,000 women) aged 25-70 years at recruitment from 1992 to 2000.

Methods: Information on reproductive characteristics was collected at recruitment.

Leukocyte telomere length in relation to pancreatic cancer risk: a prospective study.

Background: Several studies have examined leukocyte telomere length (LTL) as a possible predictor for cancer at various organ sites. The hypothesis originally motivating many of these studies was that shorter telomeres would be associated with an increase in cancer risk; the results of epidemiologic studies have been inconsistent, however, and suggested positive, negative, or null associations. Two studies have addressed the association of LTL in relation to pancreatic cancer risk and the results are contrasting.