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L Bergkvist

Publications and source records attributed to L Bergkvist.

54 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Hormone replacement therapy and the risk for first hip fracture. A prospective, population-based cohort study.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the relative risk for sustaining a first hip fracture after hormone replacement therapy. DESIGN: Prospective population-based cohort study with an average observation period of 5.7 years. SETTING: A prescription-based cohort in the Uppsala health care region in Sweden. PARTICIPANTS: The cohort (23 246 women) comprised virtually all women of 35 years of age and older who received noncontraceptive estrogens from April 1977 through March 1980. Comparisons were made with women in the background population. MEASUREMENTS: Follow-up through 1983 was done with regard to hospital admissions for a first cervical or trochanteric hip fracture. The observed number of cases was compared with that expected on the basis of person-years of observation in the cohort and incidence rates in the background population. Analyses were made in exposure categories, based solely on prescription data. MAIN RESULTS: During 133 022 person-years of observation, 163 cases of first hip fracture occurred, compared with the 205.5 expected, yielding an overall relative risk of 0.79 (95% CI, 0.68 to 0.93). The greatest protective effect (relative risk, 0.37; CI, 0.13 to 0.79) was found against trochanteric fracture among women receiving potent estrogens who were under 60 years of age at cohort entry. This group also had the highest proportion of treatments with combinations of estrogens and progestogen (41%). Treatment with less potent estrogens, mainly estriols, had no protective effect. Data indicated that the baseline risk for hip fracture was not lower in the cohort women than in the background population. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment with potent estrogens, both alone and possibly when combined with progestogens, reduces the risk for both cervical and trochanteric hip fractures within the first decade after menopause.

Adult↗

Hip fractures in women with breast cancer.

The authors investigated whether the incidence of first hip fracture, an indicator of osteoporosis, is lower in breast cancer patients, who are assumed to have higher levels of endogenous estrogens, than in other women. A population-based Swedish cohort comprising 9,673 women with invasive breast cancer diagnosed from 1958 through 1983 was followed up with respect to the occurrence of a first hip fracture during the period 1965-1983. Overall, the number of observed acute fractures (n = 387) was slightly higher than expected (n = 348.6) (standardized incidence ratio (SIR) = 1.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.0-1.2). Risk for trochanteric fractures was slightly higher than expected (SIR = 1.2, 95% CI 1.0-1.4), but risk for cervical fractures was not (SIR = 1.0, 95% CI 0.9-1.1). Risk for trochanteric fracture decreased with increasing age at breast cancer diagnosis, reaching standardized incidence ratios close to unity after the age of 70 years. Duration of follow-up appeared to be unrelated to the risk of either type of fracture. The authors conclude that the incidence of first hip fracture is not lower in breast cancer patients than in other women.

Adult↗

Risk of cancer in women receiving hormone replacement therapy.

Cancer risk following treatment with non-contraceptive estrogens was studied in a population-based cohort of 23,244 women. Complete follow-up for an average of 6.7 years revealed 1,087 incident cancers versus 962.5 expected (relative risk/RR/ = 1.13; 95% confidence interval 1.10-1.20). We confirmed the recent findings of a more detailed analysis of the same cohort, based on a 1-year shorter follow-up period, namely: a markedly increased risk of endometrial cancer (RR = 1.8; 1.5-2.1), notably in women receiving potent estrogens, i.e., conjugated estrogens or estradiol (RR = 2.0; 1.6-2.4), and a slightly increased risk of breast cancer (RR = 1.1; 1.0-1.2). A slightly decreased risk of invasive cervical cancer (RR = 0.8; 0.5-1.2) is most likely due to more frequent smear taking than in the background population. There was no increase in the risk of cancer of ovary (RR = 1.0; 0.8-1.2), pancreas (RR = 0.8; 0.5-1.2), large bowel (RR = 1.0; 0.8-1.2) or kidney (RR = 1.0; 0.7-1.4). The risk of developing cancer in liver or biliary tract was lower than expected (RR = 0.4; 0.2-0.7), particularly in women who had used potent estrogens (RR = 0.3; 0.1-0.6), an unexpected finding which warrants further studies. Increased risks of malignant melanoma (RR = 1.5; 1.0-2.1) and lung cancer (RR = 1.3; 0.9-1.7) need cautious interpretation because of their low magnitude, the absence of a biological gradient when subgroups were analyzed and the slightly higher prevalence of smokers in the cohort than in the background population.

Climacteric↗

The risk of breast cancer after estrogen and estrogen-progestin replacement.

To examine the risk of breast cancer after noncontraceptive treatment with estrogen, we conducted a prospective study of 23,244 women 35 years of age or older who had had estrogen prescriptions filled in the Uppsala region of Sweden. During the follow-up period (mean, 5.7 years) breast cancer developed in 253 women. Compared with other women in the same region, the women in the estrogen cohort had an overall relative risk of breast cancer of 1.1 (95 percent confidence interval, 1.0 to 1.3). The relative risk increased with the duration of estrogen treatment (P = 0.002), reaching 1.7 after nine years (95 percent confidence interval, 1.1 to 2.7). Estradiol (used in 56 percent of the treatment periods in the cohort) was associated with a 1.8-fold increase in risk after more than six years of treatment (95 percent confidence interval, 0.7 to 4.6). No increase in risk was found after the use of conjugated estrogens (used in 22 percent of the treatment periods) or other types, mainly estriols (used in 22 percent of the treatment periods). Although the numbers of women were smaller, the risk of breast cancer was highest among the women who took estrogen and progestin in combination for extended periods. The relative risk was 4.4 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.9 to 22.4) in women who used only this combination for more than six years. Among women who had previously used estrogens alone, the relative risk after three years or more of use of the combination regimen was 2.3 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.7 to 7.8). We conclude that in this cohort, long-term perimenopausal treatment with estrogens (or at least estradiol compounds) seems to be associated with a slightly increased risk of breast cancer, which is not prevented and may even be increased by the addition of progestins.

Adult↗

Risk of endometrial cancer after treatment with oestrogens alone or in conjunction with progestogens: results of a prospective study.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the relative risk of developing endometrial neoplasia after treatment with oestrogens alone or in conjunction with progestogens. DESIGN: Prospective cohort follow up study, average observation period 5.7 years for each patient. To have a 90% chance of detecting a relative risk of 2.0 with 95% significance the study required 78,000 person years of observation. SETTING: Community based cohort. PATIENTS: Women aged over 35 who were prescribed non-contraceptive oestrogens in the Uppsala health care region during April 1977 to March 1980 were identified from pharmacy records. Of all prescriptions issued, 95% were identified. Patients from the cohort who developed endometrial neoplasia were identified from the cancer registry of the Uppsala health care region. Compliance, sociodemographic data, and lifetime exposures to oestrogen and cyclically added progestogen were assessed by questionnaire in a sample of the cohort. The final cohort consisted of 23,244 patients (133,373 person years). The prevalence of university education, oophorectomy, and hysterectomy was higher in the cohort than the general population; no other confounding factors were identified. MEASUREMENTS: The total number of person years was divided into exposure groups by inference from the data from the questionnaire. Compensation was made for the excess of hysterectomies. Specimens from all cases of endometrial neoplasia in the cohort and 90% of cases in the general population were studied blind histopathologically. Characteristics of treatment of all women who had endometrial neoplasia were assessed by questionnaire. Relative risks and 95% confidence intervals were calculated. RESULTS: Seventy four cases of carcinoma and 33 cases of premalignant lesions occurred in the cohort. The relative risk of endometrial carcinoma was 1.8 (95% confidence interval 1.1 to 3.2) after exposure to any oestrogen compound without progestogen for more than six years; 2.2 (1.2 to 4.4) after more than three years' exposure to conjugated oestrogens without progestogen; and 2.7 (1.4 to 5.1) after more than three years' exposure to oestradiol compounds without progestogen. When carcinoma and premalignant lesions were considered together the results were similar but the relative risk was higher. Risk of carcinoma did not increase when progestogens were cyclically added to oestrogens for the entire treatment period (relative risk 0.9 (0.4 to 2.0]. CONCLUSIONS: Use of oestrogens without progestogens is associated with a twofold to threefold increase in risk of endometrial neoplasia. Use of progestogens either removes this increased risk or delays its onset. A further follow up of the cohort is essential to analyse the risks with greater statistical power.

Adult↗

Prognosis after breast cancer diagnosis in women exposed to estrogen and estrogen-progestogen replacement therapy.

The association between survival in breast cancer and menopausal hormone treatment prior to diagnosis was analyzed by comparing 261 women who developed the disease in a population-based cohort of estrogen-treated women with 6,617 breast cancer patients without any recorded estrogen treatment drawn from the same population. Complete follow-up was achieved during the 0-9 years of observation. The relative survival rate was significantly higher (p = 0.02), by about 10 percentage points at eight years, in patients who had received estrogen treatment--corresponding to an approximately 40% reduction in excess mortality. The more favorable course could be confirmed only in patients aged 50 years or more at diagnosis (p less than 0.01) and was most pronounced in recent users, that is, in women whose treatment was ongoing (p less than 0.01) or had been discontinued within one year prior to diagnosis. The time from first use to diagnosis and the total duration of estrogen medication were virtually unrelated to survival when the effect of recency was taken into account in multivariate analyses. The authors were unable to examine the effect of stage at diagnosis on the results. Several factors, particularly selection bias and surveillance bias, might have affected the results in favor of the women receiving hormone replacement therapy, but there is a possibility that exogenous female sex hormones affect survival in women with breast cancer.

Adult↗

Mammographic parenchymal patterns in women receiving noncontraceptive estrogen treatment.

Two population-based registers, one of women with at least one estrogen prescription, and the other of women who had undergone mammographic screening, were linked by means of the national registration number, revealing 3,436 estrogen-treated women who had attended the mammography screening program. Their mammographic parenchymal pattern was classified according to the criteria of Wolfe into two groups, one with a low risk and the other with a high risk of development of breast cancer. Estrogen replacement therapy was more common in women with a high risk than in those with a low risk mammographic parenchymal pattern (standardized morbidity ratio = 1.3). The increased probability of receiving noncontraceptive estrogen treatment in women with a high risk mammographic parenchymal pattern remained when the impact of several possible confounding factors had been taken into account in a logistic regression analysis (odds ratio = 1.36, 95% confidence interval 1.24-1.49). No evidence was found of a shift toward the unfavorable mammographic parenchymal pattern during treatment, which suggests that the treatment itself was not responsible for the high proportion of P2 and DY patterns. The mammographic parenchymal pattern must therefore be looked upon as a confounder in the context of studying breast cancer risk after estrogen treatment.

Adult↗

Risk factors for breast and endometrial cancer in a cohort of women treated with menopausal oestrogens.

A matched case-control study was undertaken with the aim of determining the presence of several risk factors for breast and endometrial cancer in a cohort of women--recruited from a defined geographical area of Sweden--who had received at least one oestrogen prescription for menopausal symptoms. A mailed questionnaire was answered by 653 (88.8%) of 735 women sampled from the cohort (cases) and 952 (76.8%) of 1240 women sampled from the background population (controls) and these respondents formed the basis of the analyses. The prevalence rates of oophorectomy and hysterectomy were significantly higher among oestrogen-treated women than in the background population, 10.7% versus 2.6% (odds ratio (OR) = 5.1, 95% confidence interval (Cl) 3.1-8.5) and 19.0% versus 7.3% (OR = 2.7, Cl 1.9-3.8), respectively. Higher theoretical education entailed a more than twofold increase in the risk of receiving oestrogen treatment, compared with women with less than eight years at school. Women who had a first degree relative with breast cancer ran a relative risk of receiving oestrogen therapy of 0.6 (Cl 0.4-0.9) whereas the risk for women with a prior breast biopsy was 1.4 (Cl 1.0-2.1). For all other variables studied, ie diabetes, hypertension, age at menarche, age at first livebirth, nulliparity, age at menopause, height and weight, there were no statistically significant differences between the cohort of oestrogen-treated women and the background population. We conclude that the difference in the prevalence of hysterectomy has to be taken into account when calculating the risk of endometrial cancer in the cohort.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Breast Neoplasms↗

On the age-dependent association between cancer of the breast and of the endometrium. A nationwide cohort study.

The association between breast and endometrial cancer was investigated in a cohort consisting of 60,065 subjects (99% of all women in whom a first breast cancer was diagnosed in Sweden in 1960-63 and 1968-81). Complete follow-up until 1981 revealed a total of 260 endometrial cancers, as against an expected number of 151.1 (relative risk (RR) = 1.72; 95% confidence limits (CL) 1.46; 1.87). RR increased steadily from close to unity in women younger than 50 at breast cancer diagnosis to 2.40 (CL 1.97; 2.93) in those 70 years of age and older. The excess number of endometrial cancers occurred primarily during the first five years of follow-up (RR = 2.07; CL 1.79; 2.38). A common causal agency for breast and endometrial cancer is more likely to lie in environmental than in genetic factors and other observations in the same population do not support that such factors are related to characteristics of the women's reproductive histories.

Adult↗

Reliability of women's histories of climacteric oestrogen treatment assessed by prescription forms.

A questionnaire study conducted in a cohort of women who had been prescribed oestrogen treatment for climacteric symptoms provided a unique opportunity to assess the concordance between their histories of oestrogen use and the exposure data derived from the prescription forms that had been collected for recruitment of the cohort. The questionnaire information, which was gathered within three years after the registration of prescription forms, was found to be highly concordant with the prescription data with respect to name of brand (85%), dosage (88%), treatment schedule--cyclic versus continuous--(88%), total duration of drug intake (months of treatment; correlation coefficient 0.98) and time of start of medication (correct month in 85%). A method for estimating the true exposure on the basis of prescription data--taking into account non-compliance and non-registered forms--was developed and found to be reproducible. It was concluded that information on climacteric oestrogen intake could be reliably obtained through a questionnaire within a period of less than three years after the exposure.

Adult↗

Epidemiologic determinants of the mammographic parenchymal pattern. A population-based study within a mammographic screening program.

Epidemiologic data and information on the mammographic parenchymal pattern (classified according to Wolfe (Cancer 1976;37:2486-92)) were obtained from 38,757 (89%) of all women who were invited to undergo mammography in a population-based screening program in Kopparberg County, Sweden, starting in October 1977. The prevalence of the high-risk patterns (P2 and DY) was significantly higher in women aged 46-50 years than in any younger or older age group. A univariate analysis revealed that the odds ratio (OR) of having a high-risk pattern increased regularly with increasing age at first birth and was highest in nulliparous women. These associations remained evident in all age groups and were most pronounced in the oldest women. A history of breast biopsy increased the likelihood of having a high-risk pattern (OR = 1.57), whereas a similar weak overall association with prior cancer in the contralateral breast (OR = 1.40) and with familiar occurrence of breast cancer (OR = 1.20) was eliminated when other confounding factors were considered in a multivariate analysis. The authors conclude that characteristics of the reproductive lives of women have a significant and lifelong impact on their mammographic parenchymal patterns.

Adult↗

Age as a prognostic factor in breast cancer.

Long-term survival was evaluated in a total of 12,319 women with first breast cancer, comprising 94.9% of virtually all women with first breast cancers diagnosed in Sweden in 1959 through 1963. After correction for the expected mortality, it was found that age at diagnosis was an important predictor of the probability of escaping the risk of dying of breast cancer (relative survival), with a regular trend toward a more favorable course in younger women. This difference between the age groups is apparent as early as 5 years after diagnosis and increases throughout the period of observation. Thus the relative 20-year survival rates +/- 95% confidence limits were 51.3 +/- 3.8%, 41.2 +/- 3.4%, 34.2 +/- 3.8%, and 16.6 +/- 6.3% at ages 40 through 44, 50 through 54, 60 through 69, and 70 through 79 years, respectively. Patients younger than 40 years diverged from the general trend, with a survival rate of 44.1 +/- 4.6% at 20 years.

Adult↗

Breast cancer as a risk factor for other primary malignant diseases. A nationwide cohort study.

A cohort comprising 11,452 women and based on virtually all cases of first incidence of breast cancer in Sweden in 1964-67 was followed for 13-16 completed years--corresponding to 94,078 person-years of observation--for the occurrence of subsequent primary tumors other than in the breast. A slight excess in the total number of second malignant diseases (695 observed vs. 633.7 expected; relative risk (RR) = 1.10) was possibly partly due to a higher autopsy rate with more frequent detection of preclinical cancers in the cohort than in the background population. A significant risk increase was confirmed for endometrial cancer after the age of 70 years (RR = 2.4; 95% confidence limits = 1.6-3.5) but not for ovarian cancer (RR = 1.2) or tumors of the large bowel (RR = 1.2), rectum (RR = 1.1), or any other site. It was concluded that: 1) so many subgroups were analyzed in this study that the significant association with endometrial cancer might be due to the play of chance alone and, therefore, needs further confirmation, 2) there is no common genetically linked susceptibility to primary cancer of the breast and that of other sites, 3) the hypothesis that cancers of the breast and large bowel share major etiologic factors was not supported, and 4) it is unlikely that secondary cancers significantly contribute to the late excess mortality in breast cancer patients.

Adult↗

The surgical treatment of axillary hyperhidrosis.

Axillary hyperhidrosis is a common condition and young people often suffer unnecessarily for many years in spite of the availability of good surgical methods for cure. We describe our own modification of Pettersson and Strömbäck's (1970) method of excision of the sweat glands. During the years 1972-6 218 axillary operations have been performed on 109 patients at the surgical clinic in Västerås for axillary hyperhidrosis. We reviewed 104 of these and found that 71 patients were completely satisfied and only 7 unsatisfied. Twelve patients wanted to be reoperated either because they still sweated or because they were unhappy with their scars. Thus, we found that overall the surgical methods are safe, simple and give good results.

Adolescent↗