Percentage of the risk

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Student_12
Student_12 Member Posts: 2
edited June 2014 in High Risk for Breast Cancer

Hello everyone,

 

I am doing a study about Breast Cancer. And I want to know the percentage of risk if the woman has menstrual period stopped before age 55 and after age 55.

Any help please!!

 

Thank U!

 Student_12

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  • leaf
    leaf Member Posts: 8,188
    edited May 2011

    The science of breast cancer risk is in its infancy, at least in predicting breast cancer risk for individual women who are not BRCA positive.

    Statistics itself is complex, and I certainly am NOT an expert in it.  But probably several different breast cancer risk factors can interact with each other, so its probably not possible to give you one single number.  Breast cancer risk does increase with age.

    For 'average' groups of women in the US, they often use the modified Gail model.  http://www.cancer.gov/bcrisktool/  This model assumes the person does NOT have a personal history of breast cancer.

    However, you may also want to carefully read this journal article that looks at what we know about predicting an individual's risk of breast cancer. http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/23/1673.full.pdf   In this paper, it describes how the Gail model, and other models that include more risk factors, can pretty well describe how many women in a group of women will get breast cancer.  But they do a lousy job at predicting which particular women in a group of women will get breast cancer.   They describe the models as 'better than the toss of a coin, but not by much.'

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  • Student_12
    Student_12 Member Posts: 2
    edited May 2011

    Thanks for answer.

    Yea, I do know that it is combination of many factors :) but I want to know the percentage of the risk of this specific factor (menstrual period) :)

    Thanks,

    Student_12

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  • leaf
    leaf Member Posts: 8,188
    edited May 2011

    There can be interactions between different risk factors.  For example, if you have risk factor A and risk factor B, your overall risk may be (A+B), your overall risk may be higher than (A+B), or it may be lower than (A+B).   I don't know if they can 'tease out' one single risk.

    Every woman has more than 1 risk factor. Being a woman is a risk factor, and getting older is a risk factor.

    Every model needs to compare its predictions against a population that has all the risk factors.  For example, I have the unusual LCIS and nothing worse, which is automatically excluded from the modified Gail model.  When one radiologist in a NON PEER REVIEWED paper  that did NOT COMPARE THE MODEL to an actual population of LCIS patients,  added risk for LCIS to the Gail model, I got a risk prediction of about 90% from that model  for myself. http://www.halls.md/breast/gailmods.htm In actuality, several doctors and papers support a risk estimate of about 20-40%.  That's a pretty big difference.  One doc said my risk was somewhere between 10% and 60%, but probably closer to 10% than 60%.

    So, I'm not able to answer your question because I don't know the answer.   I don't even know if your question is answerable with one  single number.  I do know they don't know much at all about predicting one solitary woman's breast cancer risk.

    Would reading the original Gail model paper help?  Maybe a Pubmed search would help, or maybe you've done that already? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=PubMed  Maybe others know a lot more than I do.

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  • 37antiques
    37antiques Member Posts: 643
    edited May 2011

    Hi student_12,

    I don't think you can get a clear answer on this one, like Leaf says, models are in their infancy.  Most of the women who are premenopausal have their menstrual cycles stopped, either by taking an antihormonal or removal of their ovaries.  Several of the women will resume their cycle, some are thrown into early menopause depending on their hormone status at the time of diagnosis, no matter what age.  There are plenty of girls on here that are on the boards for women in their 20's, 30's, 40's and so on, I think it would be safe to say we all had our periods before treatment. Breast cancer and menstrual cycle don't seem to go hand in hand, rather the hormones either drive the cancer forward or not.  Women who are diagnosed in their 50's or 60's will be starting menopause by nature.  The only real link to date seems to be the girls who are not hormone driven or are on antihormonals seem to have a higher risk of ovarian and cervical issues that otherwise might not have materialized without a cancer diganosis.  The difficulty that you will find in this study is that most women in treatment are immediately thrown into some form of chemopause, and treatment dictates that whatever remains be suppressed in hopes of increasing our life expectancy.  Age is supposed to increase risk, but I bet if you asked some of the girls in their 20's they would beg to differ.  Breast cancer is increasingly attacking younger women all of the time, which the medical field has not caught on to yet.  I don't think it makes a bit of difference if you are menstruating or not.  I do know that all the models and risk factors they have come up with to this point are absolutely meaningless, most of the women on this site have no family history, no brca mutation, no risk factors and do their daily best to be as healthy as possible, and they still get it.  There are no clear answers to this, it is just growing at will.

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