MRI screening of women with hereditary predisposition to breast cancer:diagnostic performance and survival analysis

This letter to the editor refers to the article available at doi:10.1007/ s10549-014-2931-9, and a rebuttal letter to this letter to the editor is available at doi:10.1007/s10549-014-3200-7

Could screening participation bias symptom interpretation? An interview study on women's interpretations of and responses to cancer symptoms between mammography screening rounds

Objectives: To explore how women with negative mammography screening results, but who were later diagnosed with interval breast cancer, reacted when they observed breast symptoms that could indicate malignancy in-between screening rounds. Design: Semistructured individual interviews with women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer during mammography screening intervals. Setting: Two breast diagnostic units covering two counties in Norway. Participants: 26 women diagnosed with interval breast cancer. Results: Women with a screening negative result react in two ways when experiencing a possible symptom of breast cancer. Among 24 women with a self-detected palpable lesion, 14 sought medical advice immediately. Their argument was to dispose of potential cancer as soon as possible. Ten women delayed seeking medical advice, explaining their delay as a result of practical difficulties such as holidays, uncertainty about the symptom, and previous experiences of healthcare services’ ability to handle diffuse symptoms. Also, a recent negative mammography scan led some women to assume that the palpable lesion was benign and wait for the next screening round. Conclusions: Participating in mammography screening may contribute to a postponed reaction to breast cancer symptoms, although most women acted rapidly when detecting a palpable breast lesion. Furthermore, screening participation does not necessarily increase awareness of breast cancer symptoms.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/legalcode

Tumour characteristics and survival in familial breast cancer prospectively diagnosed by annual mammography

Women from breast cancer families without a demonstrable BRCA1/2 mutation were subjected to annual mammography from age 30 years onwards. One-hundred and ninety-eight patients were diagnosed prospectively with invasive breast cancer and followed for a total of 1513 years. Overall 10-year survival was 88 %. Together with our previous report that women in such kindreds had about twice the population risk of breast cancer, the combined conclusion was that the overall chances of developing breast cancer causing death within 10 years before 50 years of age was 1 % or less when subjected to annual mammography and current treatment. These are empirical prospective observations which may be used for genetic counselling. The majority (160/194 = 84 %) of patients had ER+ and/or low grade tumours with 92 % 10-year survival. One minor group of the patients had ER- tumours, another small group had high grade tumours with nodal spread, both groups were associated with worse prognosis, but the two groups were not mutually associated

Molecular subtypes, histopathological grade and survival in a historic cohort of breast cancer patients

Molecular subtyping of breast cancer may provide additional prognostic information regarding patient outcome. However, its clinical significance remains to be established. In this study, the main aims were to discover whether reclassification of breast cancer into molecular subtypes provides more precise information regarding outcome compared to conventional histopathological grading and to study breast cancer-specific survival in the different molecular subtypes. Cases of breast cancer occurring in a cohort of women born between 1886 and 1928 with long-term follow-up were included in the study. Tissue microarrays were constructed from archival formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue from 909 cases. Using immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridisation as surrogates for gene expression analyses, all cases were reclassified into the following molecular subtypes: Luminal A; Luminal B (HER2−); Luminal B (HER2+); HER2 subtype; Basal phenotype; and five negative phenotype. Kaplan–Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazards models were used in the analyses. During the first 5 years after diagnosis, there were significant differences in prognosis according to molecular subtypes with the best survival for the Luminal A subtype and the worst for HER2 and five negative phenotype. In this historic cohort of women with breast cancer, differences in breast cancer-specific survival according to subtype occur almost exclusively amongst the histopathological grade 2 tumours. From 5 years after time of diagnosis until the end of follow-up, there appears to be no difference in survival according to molecular subtype or histopathological grade.publishedVersio

Molecular Subtypes of Breast Cancer: Long-term Incidence Trends and Prognostic Differences

Background: Secular trends in incidence and prognosis of molecular breast cancer subtypes are poorly described. We studied long-term trends in a population of Norwegian women born 1886–1977. Methods: A total of 52,949 women were followed for breast cancer incidence, and 1,423 tumors were reclassified into molecular subtypes using IHC and in situ hybridization. We compared incidence rates among women born 1886–1928 and 1929–1977, estimated age-specific incidence rate ratios (IRR), and performed multiple imputations to account for unknown subtype. Prognosis was compared for women diagnosed before 1995 and in 1995 or later, estimating cumulative risk of death and HRs. Results: Between 50 and 69 years of age, incidence rates of Luminal A and Luminal B (HER2−) were higher among women born in 1929 or later, compared with before 1929 [IRRs 50–54 years; after imputations: 3.5; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.8–6.9 and 2.5; 95% CI, 1.2–5.2, respectively], with no clear differences for other subtypes. Rates of death were lower in women diagnosed in 1995 or later, compared to before 1995, for Luminal A (HR 0.4; 95% CI, 0.3–0.5), Luminal B (HER2−; HR 0.5; 95% CI, 0.3–0.7), and Basal phenotype (HR 0.4; 95% CI, 0.2–0.9). Conclusions: We found a strong secular incidence increase restricted to Luminal A and Luminal B (HER2−) subtypes, combined with a markedly improved prognosis for these subtypes and for the Basal phenotype.acceptedVersio

Survival in Norwegian BRCA1 mutation carriers with breast cancer

Several studies of survival in women with BRCA1 mutations have shown either reduced survival or no difference compared to controls. Programmes for early detection and treatment of inherited breast cancer, have failed to demonstrate a significant improvement in survival in BRCA1 mutation carriers

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: mapping the Milky Way, nearby galaxies, and the distant universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median ). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July