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Endometriosis and mammographic density measurements in the Nurses’ Health Study II

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Abstract

Purpose

Endometriosis and mammographic density have been hypothesized to be influenced by sex steroid hormonal exposures in adolescence and early adulthood. We investigated the association between endometriosis and mammographic density, a consistent and independent risk factor for breast cancer.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional analysis among 1,581 pre- and postmenopausal women not previously diagnosed with breast cancer in the Nurses’ Health Study II cohort. We measured average percent mammographic density and absolute dense and non-dense breast area using a validated computer-assisted method. Multivariable linear regression was used to estimate the association between endometriosis and mammographic density among pre- and postmenopausal women separately.

Results

Among premenopausal women, average percent mammographic density was 43.1 % among women with endometriosis (n = 91) and 40.5 % among women without endometriosis (n = 1,150). Endometriosis was not associated significantly with mammographic density among premenopausal (% difference = 2.00 percentage points 95 % CI −1.33, 5.33) or among postmenopausal women (% difference = −0.89 percentage points 95 % CI −5.10, 3.33). Among premenopausal women, there was heterogeneity by BMI at age 18 (p value = 0.003), with a suggested association among those who were lean at age 18 (BMI < 20.6 kg/m2) (% difference = 3.74 percentage points 95 % CI −0.29, 7.78).

Conclusion

Endometriosis was not found to be associated with overall measurements of mammographic density.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute [UM1 CA176726, 3R25CA057711 to LVF], National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [HD57210, T32HD060454 to LVF], the Dana Farber and Harvard Cancer Center Mazzone Award, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Leslie V. Farland, Rulla M. Tamimi, A. Heather Eliassen, Donna Spiegelman & Stacey A. Missmer

  2. Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Rulla M. Tamimi, A. Heather Eliassen, Donna Spiegelman & Stacey A. Missmer

  3. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA

    Donna Spiegelman

  4. Slone Epidemiology Center, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Kimberly A. Bertrand

  5. Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Biology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Leslie V. Farland & Stacey A. Missmer

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  1. Leslie V. Farland
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  2. Rulla M. Tamimi
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Correspondence to Leslie V. Farland.

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Farland, L.V., Tamimi, R.M., Eliassen, A.H. et al. Endometriosis and mammographic density measurements in the Nurses’ Health Study II. Cancer Causes Control 27, 1229–1237 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-016-0801-y

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