Biostatistics Weekly Seminar

Breast cancer incidence is increasing among South Asian (SA) American women. A vast majority of South Asians are from India and Pakistan. We examined age-specific the incidence rate using data for Asian Indian and Pakistani American (AIPA) women from 1990 and 2014 using data from the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) program using a segmented Poisson regression model. We also examined the characteristics of breast cancer and in AIPA women diagnosed between 2000 and 2016 in SEER, and studied factors associated with breast cancer-specific mortality. We used data from non-Hispanic White (NHW) women as a benchmark for comparison. I will summarize our inference procedures for incidence rate based on the segmented Poisson regression model, and models based on sub-distribution and cause-specific hazard functions for breast cancer-specific mortality. I will describe how these approaches were implemented for our study. Our analyses show that breast cancer incidence increases rapidly with age in AIPA women, and the rate of increase decreases around age at menopause. Compared to NHW women, AIPA women are diagnosed at a younger age and with more aggressive breast cancers. While AIPA women have lower hazard for breast cancer-specific death than NHW women, they are followed up for a considerably shorter duration. These results provide insights into the kinds of data we need collect to better understand risk and risk factors for breast cancer in AIPA women. I will conclude by highlighting some of our plans to address the data gap. This is joint work with colleagues from Rutgers School of Public Health, Rutgers Cancer Institute and New Jersey State Cancer Registry.

Zoom (Link to Follow)
28 April 2021
1:30pm