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Smoking Linked to Ovarian Cancer Risk: Presented at AACR

By Charlene Laino

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- April 5, 2006 -- Women who are former or current smokers are at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer, according to one of the first studies to show such an association.

Inger T. Gram, MD, PhD, professor, Department of Preventive Medicine, University of Tromsų, Norway, presented the findings here on April 4^th at the 97^th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

The population-based study followed 103,083 women who were 30 to 50 years old when they were enrolled in the Norwegian-Swedish Cohort Study in 1991 and 1992. At recruitment, all participants completed a mailed questionnaire that asked about age at smoking initiation, duration of smoking, and number of cigarettes smoked daily.

National cancer registries were used to identify members of the cohort who developed ovarian cancer.

By December 2003, 277 women had developed either invasive or borderline ovarian cancer.

After adjustment for age, parity, oral contraceptive use, menopausal status, past or present use of hormone replacement therapy, and country of residence, current smokers were 48% more likely to have ovarian cancer than those who had never smoked at study entry (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.09 - 1.99).

Women who had been smoking for more than 25 years had twice the risk of ovarian cancer compared with never smokers, Dr. Gram reported. Women who had been smoking for more than 20 years were at 46% increased risk (95%CI 1.08 - 1.97).

Dr. Gram noted that 28% of the women were current smokers at study entry.

"Our result shows consistent results for the association between both current and former smoking and incident ovarian cancer," she told a press briefing.

Clinicians should share the findings with their patients as they provide teenage girls and adult women with yet another reason to avoid smoking or to quit, Dr. Gram added.


[Presentation title: Cigarette Smoking and Risk of Ovarian Cancer in Scandinavian Women. Abstract 4557]

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