Novel Recruitment Techniques for a Study of Culture-Specific Diet, Metabolic Variability and Breast Cancer Risk in African-American Women

摘要

There are few studies examining breast cancer risk in African Americans and fewer still in the rural south. African-American women are more frequently diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer than Caucasian women. Socioeconomic factors do not completely explain the ethnic differences in breast cancer mortality. The purpose of this pilot study was to develop a novel method of recruitment, focused primarily on minority women, and investigate previously unexplored risk factors for breast cancer. To date, interviews have been completed for 680 women, aged 29-75, 390 with breast cancer and 290 community controls. The participation rate for cases is 73% for Caucasian women, and 64% for African-American women. These rates are much improved over those using the standard methodology employed in an earlier study (37% and 30% for cases and controls, respectively). A food frequency questionnaire supplemented with foods commonly eaten by women in the rural south was developed and administered to the consenting breast cancer cases and controls. Entry of the questionnaire data into the computer database is complete and data cleaning and the transformation of the variables is underway. We phenotyped the breast cancer cases and controls for sulfotransferase and observed no association between sulfotransferase activity and odds of breast cancer. We genotyped the breast cancer cases and controls for 5 sulfotransferase polymorphisms and observed no association between any of the polymorphisms and odds of breast cancer. Work to complete the phenotyping and genotyping for NAT and CYPlA2 is underway. In conclusion, we have successfully developed infrastructure for the conduct of population based studies in this under served population in Arkansas. Work is underway to explore the reasons for the disparity breast cancer outcomes in African-American women compared to Caucasians.