General descriptive studies (00350): Melanoma incidence rates are rising among young women, possibly due to increasing ultraviolet radiation to previously protected body sites. We examined melanoma incidence trends by age, gender, and body site. Descriptive methods were complemented with the age-period-cohort parameters, demonstrating that melanomas are rising preferentially on the trunk among young women. Emerging data suggest that cutaneous malignant melanomas (CMM) may arise through divergent cancer pathways that are linked to intermittent versus accumulated sun exposure. However, numerous questions remain regarding the timing and/or age of exposure. We examined the effect of aging on CMM incidence in data from SEER. Gender, histopathology, and anatomic site were age-specific effect modifiers for CMM. Other skin cancer analyses focused on the incidence patterns of the rare cutaneous appendageal carcinomas and cutaneous adenoid cystic carcinomas. Male breast cancer is a rare disease, accounting for less than 1% of all breast cancer diagnoses worldwide. A multidisciplinary international meeting on male breast cancer focused on highlighting differences and similarities between breast cancer in males and females. To further enhance our understanding of male breast cancer, the Breast International Group and North American Breast Cancer Group have joined efforts to develop an International Male Breast Cancer Program and to pool epidemiologic data, clinical information, and tumor specimens. In an analysis of invasive contralateral breast cancer among 5,631 inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) and 447,767 non-IBC first breast cancer cases who survived at least 2 months following diagnosis and were reported to 13 Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries between January 1, 1973 and December 31, 2006, the general population the risk of developing a contralateral breast cancer was greater following a first IBC than non-IBC. International testicular cancer incidence rates remained highest in Northern Europe populations and lowest in Asian and African populations, and rose among most populations, with the trends for seminoma and nonseminoma generally similar. For the last 50 years, age-standardized incidence rates for noncardia gastric cancer have steadily declined in most populations. However, overall rates are summary measures that may obscure important age-specific trends. We analyzed SEER cancer incidence from 1977 through 2006 and found that the rate for noncardia gastric cancer declined among all race and age groups except for whites aged 25 to 39 years, for whom it increased. Our analysis of colorectal cancer incidence by gender, race/ethnic group, anatomic site, and age found that the male-to-female rate ratio rose from about one for cecal cancers to 1.8 for rectal cancers, increased with age most rapidly for distal colon cancers from <1.0 at ages <50 to 1.4-1.9 at older ages, and varied less by racial/ethnic group;these findings may partially reflect differences in screening experiences and access to medical care but also suggest that etiologic factors may be playing a role. There has been concern that the use of cellular telephones, which has grown explosively over the past two decades, may increase the risk of brain cancer. Our analysis of SEER brain cancer incidence found that during 1992-2006 the age-specific trends were downward or flat, except among females aged 20-29 years among whom the rates increased significantly. However, the increases were apparent only for frontal lobe cancers, and no increases were apparent for temporal or parietal lobe cancers, or cancers of the cerebellum, which involve the parts of the brain that would be more highly exposed to radiofrequency radiation from cellular phones. These data do not provide support to the view that cellular phone use causes brain cancer. Burkitt lymphoma (BL) is a unique B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma with 3 established clinical-epidemiological variants: endemic, sporadic and AIDS-related BL. Standard cross-sectional age-standardized and age specific incidence rates were stratified by sex and race and supplemented with ageperiodcohort models. Tri/bimodal incidence pattern was present in sensitivity analyses excluding registries with many HIV/AIDS cases and in period-specific, cohort-specific analyses. Young women treated with radiotherapy (RT) for Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) have a high risk of developing breast cancer (BC). To examine whether BC characteristics following HL differ from primary BC in the population remains uncertain. We identified 166 BC cases among 2,645 five-year survivors of HL in the SEER database that were diagnosed prior to age 35 years and treated with RT. Among 15-year survivors, greater increases in risk were seen for ER-negative/PR-negative versus ER-positive/PR-positive BC and higher risks emerged for high-grade versus low-grade tumors. We used thirty years of SEER incidence data to investigate the age-specific patterns for a series of cancers and found that the complicated underlying biology of human growth, development, and carcinogenesis was reflected in the highly disparate patterns across age groups. In childhood, the peak years of an organ systems increase in size correlate with peak years of cancer incidence. Conversely, in most adult-onset cancers, it is exposure to exogenous toxins, the failure of maintenance and repair, and finally, dysfunction(s) in the normal cellular aging process that likely play a role in the development of these malignancies. Special descriptive studies (10348): Ageperiodcohort (APC) analysis is used in cancer epidemiology to model trends in cancer rates. We developed methods for comparative APC analysis of two independent cause-specific hazard rates assuming that an APC model holds for each one. We constructed linear hypothesis tests to determine whether the two hazards are absolutely proportional or proportional after stratification by cohort, period, or age. When a given proportional hazards model appears adequate, we derived simple expressions for the relative hazards using identifiable APC parameters. To demonstrate the utility of these new methods, we analyzed cancer incidence rates in the United States in blacks versus whites for selected cancers. SEER special studies (00316): In 2001, the SEER program supplemented funding for three tumor registries (Iowa, LA, and Hawaii) to collect discarded formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue blocks from pathologic laboratories within their catchment areas. In a demonstration project, we validated the utility of SEERs Residual Tissue Repository (RTR) for molecular markers, using an existing set of breast cancer tissue microarrays (TMAs). Our 2nd SEER RTR will build TMAs for nearly 800 ovarian epithelial cancers (OEC). We will: 1) Assess whether tissue expression of certain molecular markers (Ki-67, P16, and P53) modify the effect of tumor grade on incidence and/or survival, and 2) Perform exploratory molecular studies to include protein and gene expression, methylation profiling, mismatch repair analysis, and tissue telomeres. Mortality Rate Generator Software (00390): The online version of the Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the United States, 1950-94, published in 1999, has been updated to include data through 2004 and is publicly available at (http://parsley.cit.nih.gov/ratecalc). Users can create customized maps according to cancer, age groups, sex, and race. US Military Cancer Institute (USMCI)/NCI Collaborative Research Program (10382): DCEG and USMCI researchers are analyzing data on more than 9 million active and retired military personnel and their families to estimate cancer rates as well as study the effects of occupational exposures and lifestyle factors on cancer risk.
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