My apologies. The published letter I referred to was about a different
Swedish study in a different journal a few years earlier. I have not read
the paper by Ekbom et al, and cannot comment on it.
(BTW, The reference of that article is Cancer Causes Control. 1994
Nov;5(6):510-6. )
I note that a search for "cancer AND handedness" on PubMed gives 871 hits.
the recent paper should not be viewed in isolation.
Doug
At 20:48 14/10/2005, =?iso-8859-8-i?B?9un06SDl4+XjIPnl5+g=?= wrote:
>I followed a suggestion to search for articles linking right-handeness to
>cancer. Look what I found:
> From Tzippy
>
>Research Papers
>
>Epidemiologic correlates of breast cancer laterality (Sweden)
>
>Anders Ekbom1, 2 [], Hans-Olov Adami1, 2, Dimitrios Trichopoulos2, Mats
>Lambe1, 3, Chung-cheng Hsieh2 and Jan Pontén4
>(1) Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University Hospital, S-751 85 Uppsala, Sweden
>(2) Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA
>(3) Department of Social Medicine, University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden
>(4) Department of Pathology, University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden
>
>Received: 2 May 1994 Accepted: 27 June 1994
>Abstract Breast cancer laterality was studied in relation to age in
>80,784 cases of invasive and 3,835 cases of pre-invasive breast cancer in
>women and 548 cases of invasive breast cancer in men reported to the
>Swedish Cancer Registry, 1970–89. In a subset of 11,274 women with
>invasive disease, data on parity were available through the Swedish
>Fertility Registry. Laterality also was evaluated in relation to age and
>reproductive variables in 3,986 cases from an international study from the
>1960s. The overall incidence of pre-invasive and invasive cancer was
>higher in the left than in the right breast among both women and men. The
>excess incidence of invasive cancer in the left breast was evident only
>after the age of 45 years in women; a similar phenomenon may exist with
>pre-invasive disease in women and in men. The age-dependent laterality
>pattern did not appear to be confounded by menopausal status. Among women
>younger than 45 years, nulliparity, right handedness, and late age at
>menarche was associated with a somewhat higher incidence of cancer in the
>right breast. The laterality findings are likely to be due to factors
>operating early in the carcinogenic process, perhaps at the pre-initiation
>stage.
>
>
_____________________________________________________
Doug Altman
Professor of Statistics in Medicine
Centre for Statistics in Medicine
Wolfson College Annexe
Linton Road
Oxford OX2 6UD
email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: 01865 284400 (direct line 01865 284401)
Fax: 01865 284424
Web: http://www.csm-oxford.org.uk/
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