Publications by authors named "Swerdlow A"

Background: Prolactin, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, regulates breast development and may contribute to breast cancer etiology. However, most epidemiologic studies of prolactin and breast cancer have been restricted to single, often small, study samples with limited exploration of effect modification.

Methods: The Biomarkers in Breast Cancer Risk Prediction consortium includes 8,279 postmenopausal women sampled from four prospective cohort studies, of whom 3,441 were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer after enrollment.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate RB1 expression and survival across ovarian carcinoma histotypes and how co-occurrence of BRCA1 or BRCA2 (BRCA) alterations and RB1 loss influences survival in tubo-ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC).

Experimental Design: RB1 protein expression was classified by immunohistochemistry in ovarian carcinomas of 7,436 patients from the Ovarian Tumor Tissue Analysis consortium. We examined RB1 expression and germline BRCA status in a subset of 1,134 HGSC, and related genotype to overall survival (OS), tumor-infiltrating CD8+ lymphocytes, and transcriptomic subtypes.

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To identify credible causal risk variants (CCVs) associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we performed genome-wide association analysis for 470,825 genotyped and 10,163,797 imputed SNPs in 25,981 EOC cases and 105,724 controls of European origin. We identified five histotype-specific EOC risk regions (p value <5 × 10) and confirmed previously reported associations for 27 risk regions. Conditional analyses identified an additional 11 signals independent of the primary signal at six risk regions (p value <10).

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Background: A high body mass index (BMI, kg/m) is associated with decreased risk of breast cancer before menopause, but increased risk after menopause. Exactly when this reversal occurs in relation to menopause is unclear. Locating that change point could provide insight into the role of adiposity in breast cancer etiology.

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Purpose: There is strong evidence that leisure-time physical activity is protective against postmenopausal breast cancer risk but the association with premenopausal breast cancer is less clear. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of physical activity with the risk of developing premenopausal breast cancer.

Methods: We pooled individual-level data on self-reported leisure-time physical activity across 19 cohort studies comprising 547,601 premenopausal women, with 10,231 incident cases of breast cancer.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied a common genetic change that happens in a type of ovarian cancer called high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC), looking at how it affects patient survival.
  • They found that losing the RB1 protein was linked to longer survival in patients with HGSC, but it was the opposite for a different type of ovarian cancer called endometrioid cancer.
  • Patients with both RB1 loss and certain inherited genetic changes had much better survival rates compared to those with just one of these problems or none at all.
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Type 2 diabetes is associated with raised risk of several cancers, but for type 1 diabetes risk data are fewer and inconsistent We assembled a cohort of 23 473 UK patients with insulin-treated diabetes diagnosed at ages <30, almost all of whom will have had type 1 diabetes, and for comparison 5058 diagnosed at ages 30 to 49, of whom we estimate two-thirds will have had type 2, and followed them for an average of 30 years for cancer incidence and mortality compared with general population rates. Patients aged <30 at diabetes diagnosis had significantly raised risks only for ovarian (standardised incidence ratio = 1.58; 95% confidence interval 1.

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Purpose: Women with preeclampsia are more likely to deliver preterm. Reports of inverse associations between preeclampsia and breast cancer risk, and positive associations between preterm birth and breast cancer risk are difficult to reconcile. We investigated the co-occurrence of preeclampsia/gestational hypertension with preterm birth and breast cancer risk using data from the Premenopausal Breast Cancer Collaborative Group.

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  • The study aimed to investigate the relationship between p53 protein expression and survival rates in women with different types of ovarian cancer, particularly high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC), endometrioid carcinoma (EC), and clear cell carcinoma (CCC), using a large cohort from the Ovarian Tumor Tissue Analysis (OTTA) consortium.
  • It was found that abnormal p53 expression patterns were prevalent in 93.4% of HGSC cases, but in EC and CCC, these abnormal patterns were linked to a significantly higher risk of death, indicating a poor prognosis.
  • The research concluded that while abnormal p53 expression doesn't affect survival in HGSC, it serves as a strong independent prognostic marker for EC and CCC,
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Laboratory and animal research support a protective role for vitamin D in breast carcinogenesis, but epidemiologic studies have been inconclusive. To examine comprehensively the relationship of circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] to subsequent breast cancer incidence, we harmonized and pooled participant-level data from 10 U.S.

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Background: Cyclin E1 (CCNE1) is a potential predictive marker and therapeutic target in tubo-ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC). Smaller studies have revealed unfavorable associations for CCNE1 amplification and CCNE1 overexpression with survival, but to date no large-scale, histotype-specific validation has been performed. The hypothesis was that high-level amplification of CCNE1 and CCNE1 overexpression, as well as a combination of the two, are linked to shorter overall survival in HGSC.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates the causal relationship between physical activity, sedentary behavior, and breast cancer risk using Mendelian randomization, analyzing data from over 130,000 European women.
  • - Findings suggest that higher levels of genetic predisposition to physical activity are linked to a significantly lower overall breast cancer risk, particularly for pre/perimenopausal cases, while increased sedentary time correlates with a higher risk of certain types of tumors.
  • - The results are consistent across various test groups and indicate that promoting physical activity and reducing sedentary behavior might be beneficial in mitigating breast cancer risks.
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  • - Genome-wide association studies have identified over 200 genetic variants linked to breast cancer, but these only account for a small portion of the overall risk, prompting researchers to explore the role of gene-environment interactions.
  • - The study used data from over 93,000 individuals to analyze how predicted gene expression might interact with 14 known risk factors for breast cancer, employing rigorous statistical methods to assess these interactions.
  • - Ultimately, the research found no strong evidence supporting significant gene-environment interactions affecting breast cancer risk, indicating that these genetic expressions may play a limited role in modifying the impact of established risk factors.
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Purpose: Breast cancer is uncommon in men and its aetiology is largely unknown, reflecting the limited size of studies thus far conducted. In general, number of children fathered has been found a risk factor inconsistently, and infertility not. We therefore investigated in a case-control study, the relation of risk of breast cancer in men to infertility and number of children.

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  • * Through analysis of over 9 million genetic variants, the researchers found that none showed a significant interaction with MHT use for breast cancer risk, indicating common genetic variations do not heavily influence this association.
  • * The strongest evidence of interaction was linked to a specific genetic variant, but overall findings suggest MHT's effect on breast cancer risk is primarily not affected by common genetic factors.
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Background: Mammographic density (MD) phenotypes, including percent density (PMD), area of dense tissue (DA), and area of non-dense tissue (NDA), are associated with breast cancer risk. Twin studies suggest that MD phenotypes are highly heritable. However, only a small proportion of their variance is explained by identified genetic variants.

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Study Question: Can additional genetic variants for circulating anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels be identified through a genome-wide association study (GWAS) meta-analysis including a large sample of premenopausal women?

Summary Answer: We identified four loci associated with AMH levels at P < 5 × 10-8: the previously reported MCM8 locus and three novel signals in or near AMH, TEX41 and CDCA7.

What Is Known Already: AMH is expressed by antral stage ovarian follicles in women, and variation in age-specific circulating AMH levels has been associated with disease outcomes. However, the physiological mechanisms underlying these AMH-disease associations are largely unknown.

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  • * Out of those tested, 118 had COVID-19, with 94 showing symptoms and only 2 fatalities, revealing high levels of S1-reactive and neutralizing antibodies against the virus.
  • * Immune responses varied, particularly with hematological cancer patients showing unique challenges but still managing clinical recovery, highlighting the need for more research on immune durability against different SARS-CoV-2 variants.
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We investigated the association of allergic diseases and epilepsy with risk of brain tumours, in Interphone, a 13-country case-control study. Data were obtained from 2693 glioma cases, 2396 meningioma cases, and 1102 acoustic neuroma cases and their 6321 controls. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate pooled odds ratios (ORs) and their respective 95% confidence intervals (CIs), adjusted for education and time at interview.

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Breast cancer is uncommon in men and knowledge about its causation limited. Obesity is a risk factor but there has been no investigation of whether weight change is an independent risk factor, as it is in women. In a national case-control study, 1998 men with breast cancer incident in England and Wales during 2005 to 2017 and 1597 male controls were interviewed about risk factors for breast cancer including anthropometric factors at several ages.

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Germline copy number variants (CNVs) are pervasive in the human genome but potential disease associations with rare CNVs have not been comprehensively assessed in large datasets. We analysed rare CNVs in genes and non-coding regions for 86,788 breast cancer cases and 76,122 controls of European ancestry with genome-wide array data. Gene burden tests detected the strongest association for deletions in BRCA1 (P = 3.

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Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have the potential to improve risk stratification. Joint estimation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) effects in models could improve predictive performance over standard approaches of PRS construction. Here, we implemented computationally efficient, penalized, logistic regression models (lasso, elastic net, stepwise) to individual level genotype data and a Bayesian framework with continuous shrinkage, "select and shrink for summary statistics" (S4), to summary level data for epithelial non-mucinous ovarian cancer risk prediction.

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