Influence of selected hormonal and lifestyle factors on familial propensity to ovarian cancer

AIM: To study the influence of established risk factors for ovarian cancer in women with a family history of ovarian and/or breast cancer. METHODS: Italian hospital-based case-control study. Cases were 1031 women with incident epithelial ovarian cancer and controls were 2411 women. Two "Adult life risk scores" (ALRS) were defined combining the effect of hormonal and lifestyle risk factors. RESULTS: Ovarian cancer risk increased with low number of children, late menopause, never or short oral contraceptive use, physical inactivity, rich red meat intake and low fish, pulse and vegetable intake. For hormonal factors, compared to women without a family history and low ALRS, the odds ratios (OR) was 1.77 for women without family history and high ALRS, 2.51 for women with family history and low ALRS and 5.99 for women with family history and high ALRS. The corresponding values for the lifestyle ALRS were 2.00, 2.24 and 7.43. CONCLUSIONS: Intervention on selected hormonal and lifestyle risk factors might be more important for women with family history of ovarian and/or breast cancer.