Breast Cancer and the Environment on Long Island Follow-Up Study

Marilie D. Gammon, Ph.D., principal investigator University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, N.C.

In the spring of 2002, Dr. Marilie Gammon, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and collaborating scientists in New York City, will begin re-contacting women with breast cancer who participated in the Breast Cancer and the Environment on Long Island Study, and invite them to participate in a follow-up study.

The goals of the study are to determine whether the risk of developing breast cancer is associated with environmental factors, in particular organochlorine compounds (including DDT/DDE, PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Findings from the initial study will be reported in 2002.

The primary aims of this new follow-up study are to determine whether these environmental factors and other lifestyle factors influence disease-free survival and overall survival among a population-based sample of Long Island women diagnosed with breast cancer.

Participants in the initial study who had breast cancer (cases) and who indicated during their original participation that it was permissible to contact them in the future will be re-contacted about 5 years after their initial diagnosis. These women will be approached about participating in a 60-minute telephone interview.

Participants will be re-asked questions that were administered as part of initial study, including questions about lifestyle, medical history, family history, residential history, and occupational history. Thus, changes in exposures that have occurred since diagnosis can be examined.

Information about each woman's original breast cancer treatment and any recurrences also will be collected. Further analyses will be conducted on the biologic samples collected when the women enrolled in the initial study.

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a 4-year grant for this follow-up study in August 2001. Dr. Gammon's collaborators are at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Columbia University and Mt. Sinai Medical Center, New York City.

Funding / Timeline