A Different Perspective on Breast Cancer Risk Factors: Some Implications of the Nonattributable Risk

Abstract

Many risk factors for breast cancer are known, but each makes a relatively small contribution to individual risk. Nearly a dozen risk factors taken together accounted for only about 25% of total risk in a population of 570,000 women enrolled in the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study I (1959-66). This study was considered path-breaking in 1982. Nevertheless, breast cancer remains the leading cause of cancer in US women three decades later