Highlights of This Issue

Although alcohol consumption is an established risk factor for incident breast cancer, its role in breast cancer prognosis is unclear. Kwan and colleagues evaluated postdiagnosis alcohol consumption with both cancer recurrence and mortality among 9,329 breast cancer patients in the After Breast Cancer Pooling Project. The authors report that regular alcohol intake was not associated with risk of breast cancer recurrence; however, postmenopausal women who regularly consumed alcohol had increased risk of recurrence.

There is a positive association between calcium intake and prostate cancer risk. Rowland and colleagues evaluated whether this association was modified by particular vitamin D receptor (VDR) genotypes that influence calcium absorption. Among men with a low calcium absorption VDR genotype, those in the lowest quartile of calcium intake had a 50% reduction in prostate cancer risk compared with those in the upper quartiles of calcium intake. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that genetic determinants of calcium absorption influence prostate cancer risk and may contribute to racial disparities in prostate cancer incidence and mortality rates.

The interpretation of uterine cancer rates is complicated because risk estimates often include women who have already undergone hysterectomies. To address this, Siegel and colleagues used population-based cancer registries, U.S. Census data and data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to estimate hysterectomy-corrected, age-adjusted uterine cancer rates. The authors report that stateby-state hysterectomy-corrected uterine cancer incidence rates were consistently higher than uncorrected rates. Failure to adjust uterine cancer rates for hysterectomy prevalence distorts the true geographic and racial patterns.

There is strong association between high viral load (VL) of human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 and risk for cervical cancer in situ (CIS), yet little data is available regarding HPV16 and invasive SCC. Sundström and colleagues evaluated HPV16 VL in women with CIS and invasive SCC and found low VLs were common among both CIS and SCC cases. In SCC cases, high HRV16 VL conferred increased risk, but only from 3 years before diagnosis, which differs considerably from CIS cases. HPV16 VL dynamics are complex in SCC, which may limit its use in screening.