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Age at menarche and the risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers

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Abstract

Age at menarche is a strong and consistent predictor of breast cancer risk in the general population, but has not been well studied in women with a family history of breast cancer. We conducted this study to examine whether the presence of a deleterious BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation influences age at menarche and to investigate whether or not there is an association between age at menarche and the risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers. The presence of a deleterious BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation did not appear to influence a woman’s age at menarche. A matched case–control study was conducted on 1311 pairs of women who have been identified to be carriers of a deleterious mutation in either the BRCA1 (n = 945 pairs) or the BRCA2 gene (n = 366 pairs). Information about age at menarche was derived from a questionnaire routinely administered to carriers of a mutation in either gene. Among women who carried a deleterious BRCA1 mutation, age at menarche was inversely associated with the risk of breast cancer (p trend = 0.0002). This association was not observed among BRCA2 mutation carriers (p trend = 0.49). Compared with BRCA1 carriers whose age at menarche was ≤11 years, women with a menarcheal age between 14 and 15 years old had a 54% reduction in risk (OR = 0.46; 95% CI 0.30–0.69). This study implicates early age at menarche as a determinant of breast cancer among women with a BRCA1 mutation.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research in Women’s Health, University of Toronto, 790 Bay Street, 7th Floor, Women’s College Hospital, Canada

    Joanne Kotsopoulos, Ping Sun & Steven A. Narod

  2. Department of Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Joanne Kotsopoulos

  3. Hereditary Cancer Center, Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin, Poland

    Jan Lubinski

  4. Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NE, USA

    Henry T. Lynch

  5. Epidemiology Division, Department of Medicine, University of California, Irvine, USA

    Susan L. Neuhausen

  6. Epidemiology Research Unit, Research Centre, Centre Hospitalier de l’ Universitaire Montréal, CHUM Hôtel Dieu, Département de Nutrition, Faculte du Medicine, Quebec, Canada

    Parviz Ghadirian

  7. Lombardi Cancer Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, USA

    Claudine Isaacs

  8. British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Barbara Weber

  9. Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Charmaine Kim-Sing

  10. Departments of Medicine, Human Genetics, and Oncology, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    William D. Foulkes

  11. Institute of Genetics, Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel

    Ruth Gershoni-Baruch

  12. London Regional Cancer Center, London, ON, Canada

    Peter Ainsworth

  13. The Suzanne Levy Gertner Oncogenetics Unit, The Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel

    Eitan Friedman

  14. Division of Population Science, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Mary Daly

  15. Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Judy E. Garber

  16. Gynecology Oncology, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA

    Beth Karlan

  17. Center for Clinical Cancer Genetics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Olufunmilayo I. Olopade

  18. Beth Isreal Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA

    Nadine Tung

  19. Hereditary Cancer Program, Division of Human Genetics, Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Howard M. Saal

  20. Toronto-Sunnybrook Regional Cancer Center, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Andrea Eisen

  21. Strang Cancer Prevention Center, New York, NY, USA

    Michael Osborne

  22. Jubileum Institute, Department of Oncology, Lund University Hospital, Lund, Sweden

    Hakan Olsson

  23. Internal Medicine/Medical Genetics, WCM University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Dawna Gilchrist

Authors
  1. Joanne Kotsopoulos
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  2. Jan Lubinski
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  3. Henry T. Lynch
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  23. Ping Sun
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  24. Steven A. Narod
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Additional information

* Address correspondence to: Steven A. Narod, Centre for Research in Women’s Health, University of Toronto, 790 Bay Street, Room 750, 7th Floor, Women’s College Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, M5G 1N8, Canada. Ph.: +1-416-351-3765; Fax: +1-416-351-3767; E-mail: steven.narod@swchsc.on.ca

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Kotsopoulos, J., Lubinski, J., Lynch, H.T. et al. Age at menarche and the risk of breast cancer in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. Cancer Causes Control 16, 667–674 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-005-1724-1

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