DDT and Breast Cancer Trends (original) (raw)
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DDT Exposure in Utero and Breast Cancer
The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism, 2015
Currently no direct evidence links in utero dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) exposure to human breast cancer. However, in utero exposure to another xenoestrogen, diethylstilbestrol, predicts an increased breast cancer risk. If this finding extends to DDT, it could have far-reaching consequences. Many women were heavily exposed in utero during widespread DDT use in the 1960s. They are now reaching the age of heightened breast cancer risk. DDT exposure persists and use continues in Africa and Asia without clear knowledge of the consequences for the next generation. In utero exposure to DDT is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. This was a case-control study nested in a prospective 54-year follow-up of 9300 daughters in the Child Health and Development Studies pregnancy cohort (n = 118 breast cancer cases, diagnosed by age 52 y and 354 controls matched on birth year). Kaiser Foundation Health Plan members who received obstetric care in Alameda County, California, f...
The Role of the Insecticide DDT in Breast Cancer
2005
Breast cancer is by far the most common cancer among black and white females, with approximately 211,000 new cases expected to be diagnosed in the U .S. in 2004 (1). More importantly, incidence has been increasing. Age-adjusted breast cancer incidence in U.S. females rose from the 88 .6 per 100,000 in the early 1970s to 109.8 in the early 1990s (2). This represents a 24 percent increase over that time. This trend is only partially explained by the known risk factors for breast cancer, including advancing age, early menarche, late menopause, late age at first parturition and family history. Therefore, researchers have been searching for additional contributing factors, including environmental exposure to compounds known or suspected to be carcinogenic or estrogenic (estrogenic compounds are recognized as carcinogens, and are considered particularly important in breast cancer). This search has lead to a resurgence of interest in the possible role of the insecticide DDT in breast cancer (3). Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was the first chlorinated insecticide created. Originally prepared in 1873, the compound was found to have mild hormone-like activity but no functional purpose was recognized. It was not until 1939 that Paul Muller of Geigy Pharmaceutical in Switzerland discovered the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide. DDT immediately came into widespread agricultural and commercial use, with approximately 675,000 tons being applied in the US alone between 1940 and 1972 (4). Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, concerns were raised because of DDT's long half-life, lipid solubility and the subsequent bio-accumulation in higher levels of the food chain. This reached a crescendo in 1962, with the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring. She asserted that widespread use of organic pesticides, and particularly DDT, was causing significant injury to the environment and wildlife. As criticism mounted, many people began to question the validity of early toxicology studies of DDT. However, little new conclusive evidence was developed. In 1972, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (E PA), William Ruckelshaus, banned virtually all DDT use in the U .S. In his justification for the ban, Ruckelshaus stated that, "DDT is a potent human carcinogen ." However, some have alleged that the decision was more political than scientific, and the carcinogenic nature had not been established (5). DDT use continued in other parts of the world, and even today a lively debate exists as to whether its benefits exceed its risks. This paper will attempt to review some of the data available about the possible association of DDT with a single type of cancer, breast cancer. Numerous challenges exist in studying a potential association between DDT and breast cancer. The first is the long latency period that is known to exist for cancer development, even among strong carcinogens. Thus, the majority of studies relating to this topic have been case-control. Others, including arguably the most complete and meaningful studies, have been prospective studies, with nested case control components (6).
DDT (dicophane) and postmenopausal breast cancer in Europe: case-control study
BMJ, 1997
To examine any possible links between exposure to DDE (1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis (p-chlorophenyl)ethylene), the persistent metabolite of the pesticide dicophane (DDT), and breast cancer. Design: Multicentre study of exposure to DDE by measurement of adipose tissue aspirated from the buttocks. Laboratory measurements were conducted in a single laboratory. Additional data on risk factors for breast cancer were obtained by standard questionnaires. Setting: Centres in Germany, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Switzerland, and Spain. Subjects: 265 postmenopausal women with breast cancer and 341 controls matched for age and centre. Main outcome measure: Adipose DDE concentrations. Results: Women with breast cancer had adipose DDE concentrations 9.2% lower than control women. No increased risk of breast cancer was found at higher concentrations. The odds ratio of breast cancer, adjusted for age and centre, for the highest versus the lowest fourth of DDE distribution was 0.73 (95% confidence interval 0.44 to 1.21) and decreased to 0.48 (0.25 to 0.95; P for trend = 0.02) after adjustment for body mass index, age at first birth, and current alcohol drinking. Adjustment for other risk factors did not materially affect these estimates. Conclusions: The lower DDE concentrations observed among the women with breast cancer may be secondary to disease inception. This study does not support the hypothesis that DDE increases risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women in Europe.
DDE and DDT in Breast Adipose Tissue and Risk of Female Breast Cancer
2000
A case-control study was conducted in Connecticut from 1994 to 1997 to investigate the relation between dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDE) and dichlorodiphenyttrichloroethane (DDT) exposure and breast cancer risk. Cases and controls were women aged 40-79 years, who had breast-related surgery at the Yale-New Haven Hospital and from whose surgical specimen the authors could obtain at least 0.4 g of breast adipose tissue for chemical analyses. A total of 304 incident breast cancer cases (including 62 in situ carcinomas) and 186 benign breast disease controls were recruited into the study. Tissue levels of DDE and DDT were measured using gas chromatography. Statistical significance for comparisons of mean levels of DDE and DDT was calculated using analysis of variance and rank sum tests. A logistic regression model was used to estimate the association and to control confounding. The age-adjusted geometric mean tissue level of DDE for cases (736.5 ppb) was similar to that for the controls (784.1 ppb). DDT levels were also similar for cases (51.8 ppb) and controls (55.6 ppb). The adjusted odds ratio is 0.9 (95% confidence interval: 0.5,1.5) for DDE and 0.8 (95% confidence interval: 0.5, 1.5) for DDT when the highest quartile was compared with the lowest. These results do not support an association between adipose tissue levels of DDE and DDT and breast cancer risk. Am J Epidemiol
Environmental pollutants and breast cancer
Cancer, 2007
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women (Parkin et al. 2001). Incidence is highest in North America, Northern Europe, and Australia, where age-adjusted rates are 75-92 per 100,000 women (standardized to year 2000 world population), and lowest in Asia and Africa, where incidence is less than 22 per 100,000 (Parkin et al. 2001). Mortality has increased steadily from the 1960s until the late 1980s, when rates declined in many countries, including the United States (Parkin et al. 2001). Mortality continued to climb, however, for African Americans, whose mortality rates have exceeded the U.S. average since the 1980s (SEER 2002). Worldwide, breast cancer incidence continues to rise in all age groups, with an increase in U.S. age-adjusted incidence of more than 40% from the early 1970s to the late 1990s (Clegg et al. 2002; SEER 2002). An estimated 203,500 new invasive breast cancer diagnoses are expected in the United States this year, 54,300 in situ cases, and 45,000 deaths (ACS 2002). About 40% of new invasive cases are diagnosed in women younger than 60 years of age (ACS 1996), and breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women 35-54 years of age (National Center for Health Statistics 1997). The threat to women in mid life coupled with observations of substantial temporal and geographic variation and poor prediction of individual risk has prompted a search for women at the beginning of the 1990s was 40% lower than for U.S. non-Hispanic white women but increased 19% by 1998 compared with 7% increase for non-Hispanic whites (SEER 2002). In Los Angeles County, California, where ethnic diversity allows for more detailed analysis of trends in ethnic populations, incidence among non-Hispanic whites is 20% higher than for African Americans and roughly double the rate for Hispanics and Asian Americans; in contrast, the rates of change are highest among Asian Americans. Los Angeles County breast cancer incidence rose by 1.1% per year in 1993-1997 among non-Hispanic whites, 2.1% in Hispanics, and 4.6% in Asians, while declining by 0.3% for
Pesticides and breast cancer risk: a comparison between developed and developing countries
Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention : APJCP, 2010
A large number of studies in Europe and US find little or no association between pesticides and breast cancer, adding to the increasingly dominant view that pesticides are not causally related to breast cancer. We investigated whether there are any differences in the levels of pesticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), hexachlorobenzene (HCB) and hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) and their effect for the development of breast cancer between developed and developing countries. A pubmed search for literature on pesticides, organochlorines, organophosphates and breast cancer risk from 1990 through 2009 was carried out. The level of pesticide exposure is higher in developing world than the developed world. DDT is found to be positively associated with breast cancer risk. Results for other pesticides are equivocal. There is a dearth of studies in developing countries, which cannot be made up for generalizing t...
Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prevention a Publication of the American Association For Cancer Research Cosponsored By the American Society of Preventive Oncology, 2000
We examined plasma dichlorodiphenyldichloroethene (DDE) and total polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) levels in relation to breast cancer in a population-based, casecontrol study of African-American women (292 cases and 270 controls) and white women (456 cases and 389 controls) in North Carolina. Adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for breast cancer comparing the highest to lowest third of DDE were 1.41 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.87-2.29] in African-American women and 0.98 (95% CI, 0.67-1.43) in white women. ORs comparing the highest to lowest third of total PCBs were 1.74 (95% CI, 1.00-3.01) in African-American women and 1.03 (95% CI, 0.68-1.56) in white women. Among African-Americans, the OR for total PCBs was highest for obese women (body mass index >34.2; OR, 4.92; 95% CI, 1.63-14.83). In contrast, the OR for DDE was highest for the leanest African-American women (body mass index, <25; OR, 3.84; 95% CI, 0.98-15.08). ORs for DDE were not elevated among women who lived or worked on farms or elevated among farming women who reported exposure to pesticides. Our results suggest absence of a strong effect for DDE or total PCBs in breast cancer but lend support for associations among subgroups of women. In our study, factors such as income, parity, breastfeeding, race/ethnicity, and body mass index influenced the relationship of organochlorines and breast cancer. Differing distributions of such factors may explain some of the inconsistencies across previous studies.
Osong public health and research perspectives, 2014
This study extended and updated a meta-analysis of the association between exposure to dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and the risk of breast cancer. We reviewed the published literature on exposure to DDE and breast cancer risk to update a meta-analysis from 2004. The total of 35 studies included 16 hospital-based case-control studies, 11 population-based case-control studies, and 10 nested case-control studies identified through keyword searches in the PubMed and EMBASE databases. The summary odds ratio (OR) for the identified studies was 1.03 (95% confidence interval 0.95-1.12) and the overall heterogeneity in the OR was observed (I (2) = 40.9; p = 0.006). Subgroup meta-analyses indicated no significant association between exposure to DDE and breast cancer risk by the type of design, study years, biological specimen, and geographical region of the study, except from population-based case-control studies with estimated DDE levels in serum published in 1990s. Existing studies...
International Journal of Cancer, 2001
The environmental organochlorines 2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)-1,1,1,trichloroethane (DDT) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been implicated as potential causes of female breast cancer. We continued follow-up of our 1997 case-control study nested in the Nurses' Health Study cohort, adding 143 postmenopausal cases and controls to the original 238 pairs, and examining specific PCB congeners for the first time. We measured plasma levels of 2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethylene (DDE), the major metabolite of DDT, and PCBs prospectively, comparing women who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 1 month and 4 years after blood collection with control women in whom breast cancer did not develop. Median concentrations of lipid-adjusted DDE, total PCBs, and PCB numbers 118, 138, 153 and 180, assessed individually, were similar among the cases and controls. The multivariate relative risk of breast cancer for women in the highest quintile of exposure as compared with women in the lowest quintile was 0.82 for DDE (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.49-1.37) and 0.84 for total PCBs (95% CI: 0.47-1.52), 0.69 for PCB 118 (95% CI: 0.39-1.22), 0.87 for PCB 138 (95% CI: 0.50-1.50), 0.83 for PCB 153 (95% CI: 0.47-1.48), and 0.98 for PCB 180 (95% CI: 0.55-1.75). Sub-group analyses were also performed. Overall, our results do not support the hypothesis that exposure to DDT and PCBs increases the risk of breast cancer.