What parents want to know about caring for their preterm infant: A longitudinal descriptive study.

Objectives: To describe the characteristics of parent knowledge needs and skill acquisition over the course of their infant's neonatal intensive care unit hospitalization.

Methods: 148 parents/guardians of infants ≤33 week gestation enrolled during the usual care phase of a multi-site quasi-experimental study, completing weekly surveys about their learning needs for the coming week and skills learned in the past week.

Results: The topics of most interest or concern for parents included feeding their infant and their infant's medical course.

BMI, physical activity, and breast cancer subtype in white, black, and Sea Island breast cancer survivors.

Higher BMI, lower rates of physical activity (PA), and hormone receptor-negative breast cancer (BC) subtype are associated with poorer BC treatment outcomes. We evaluated the prevalence of high BMI, low PA level, and BC subtype among survivors with white/European American (EA) and African American (AA) ancestry, as well as a distinct subset of AAs with Sea Island/Gullah ancestry (SI). We used the South Carolina Central Cancer Registry to identify 137 (42 EAs, 66 AAs, and 29 SIs) women diagnosed with BC and who were within 6-21 months of diagnosis.

Alcohol and Tobacco Use in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Breast Cancer Patients, Including Sea Island African Americans: Implications for Survivorship.

Data suggest that modifiable risk factors such as alcohol and tobacco use may increase the risk of breast cancer (BC) recurrence and reduce survival. Female BC mortality in South Carolina is 40% higher among African Americans (AAs) than European Americans (EAs). Given this substantial racial disparity, using a cross-sectional survey design we examined alcohol and tobacco use in an ethnically diverse statewide study of women with recently diagnosed invasive breast cancer.

Trends in Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy and Other Types of Breast Cancer Surgery, South Carolina, 2005-2013.

Background And Objectives: Over the last decade, researchers have noted an increase in the rate of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) across the United States despite the limited evidence on survival improvement associated with this surgery. Due to a lack of information on CPM in South Carolina, the authors of this study proposed to evaluate trends of different breast cancer surgery types with an emphasis on CPM rates.

Methods: A descriptive analysis was conducted regarding CPM in South Carolina among females who underwent surgery for breast cancer cases diagnosed from 2005-2013.

Global DNA methylation and one-carbon metabolism gene polymorphisms and the risk of breast cancer in the Sister Study.

Global decrease in DNA methylation is a common feature of cancer and is associated with genomic and chromosomal instability. Retrospective case-control studies have reported that cancer patients have lower global methylation levels in blood DNA than do controls. We used prospectively collected samples and a case-cohort study design to examine global DNA methylation and incident breast cancer in 294 cases and a sample of 646 non-cases in the Sister Study, a study of 50 884 women aged 35-74 years who had not been diagnosed with breast cancer at the time of blood draw.