Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 17, 2004|Volume 33, Number 3

Grant funds study exploring the link between mammographic breast density and cancer

Researchers in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health (EPH) at the School of Medicine have been awarded a four-year, $1.3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to study the association between mammographic breast density and the risk of breast carcinoma in-situ (BCIS), a non-invasive form of breast cancer.

The study will be led by Elizabeth B. Claus, associate professor of public health in the Division of Biostatistics at EPH. She and her team will collect and review mammograms for about 2,000 women from the state of Connecticut in order to determine whether mammographic breast density can be used to predict the risk of BCIS and whether mammograms can be better characterized with respect to high- and low-risk outcomes, prior to surgical or other intervention.

As efforts to screen women using mammography have increased, so has the number of women diagnosed with BCIS.

"Clarification of the association between mammographic characteristics, such as mammographic breast density, and BCIS risk is important because up to 20% of screened breast cancer patients are diagnosed with this lesion and increased mammographic breast density is associated with an up to six-fold increase in the risk of invasive breast cancer," says Claus.

Other researchers on the project include Beth Jones, assistant professor of epidemiology in the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at EPH, Carol Lee of the Department of Radiology and Celia Byrne of Georgetown University.

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