Australian Ovarian Cancer Study Group

BACKGROUND: Although folate intake has not been associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer overall, studies of other cancer types have suggested that high folate intake may promote carcinogenesis in precancerous lesions. Women with…

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association between hysterectomy and ovarian cancer, and to understand how hormone therapy (HT) use and endometriosis affect this association. METHODS: We conducted a pooled analysis of self-reported data from 11…

BACKGROUND: Parity is associated with decreased risk of invasive ovarian cancer; however, the relationship between incomplete pregnancies and invasive ovarian cancer risk is unclear. This relationship was examined using 15 case-control stud…

PURPOSE: Previous epidemiologic studies have shown that smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity are associated with poor survival following a diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Yet, the combined relationship of these unfavorable lifestyle facto…

BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer incidence differs substantially by race/ethnicity, but the reasons for this are not well understood. Data were pooled from the African American Cancer Epidemiology Study (AACES) and 11 case-control studies in the …

Background: Comorbidities can affect survival of ovarian cancer patients by influencing treatment efficacy. However, little evidence exists on the association between individual concurrent comorbidities and prognosis in ovarian cancer patie…

Menstrual pain, a common gynecological condition, has been associated with increased risk of ovarian cancer in some, but not all studies. Furthermore, potential variations in the association between menstrual pain and ovarian cancer by hist…

BACKGROUND: Despite a large body of literature evaluating the association between recreational physical activity and epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) risk, the extant evidence is inconclusive, and little is known about the independent associ…

OBJECTIVE: Clinical genetic testing is commercially available for rs61764370, an inherited variant residing in a KRAS 3' UTR microRNA binding site, based on suggested associations with increased ovarian and breast cancer risk as well as wit…

BACKGROUND: Mucinous ovarian tumors are an unusual group of rare neoplasms with an apparently clear progression from benign to borderline to carcinoma, yet with a controversial cell of origin in the ovarian surface epithelium. They are thou…

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is a heterogeneous cancer with both genetic and environmental risk factors. Variants influencing the risk of developing the less-common EOC subtypes have not been fully investigated. We performed a genome-wid…

PURPOSE: The majority of previous studies have observed an increased risk of mucinous ovarian tumors associated with cigarette smoking, but the association with other histological types is unclear. In a large pooled analysis, we examined th…

BACKGROUND: There are several well-established environmental risk factors for ovarian cancer, and recent genome-wide association studies have also identified six variants that influence disease risk. However, the interplay between such risk…

HNF1B is overexpressed in clear cell epithelial ovarian cancer, and we observed epigenetic silencing in serous epithelial ovarian cancer, leading us to hypothesize that variation in this gene differentially associates with epithelial ovaria…

Genital powder use has been associated with risk of epithelial ovarian cancer in some, but not all, epidemiologic investigations, possibly reflecting the carcinogenic effects of talc particles found in most of these products. Whether risk i…

Whilst previous studies have reported that higher BMI increases a woman's risk of developing ovarian cancer, associations for the different histological subtypes have not been well defined. As the prevalence of obesity has increased dramati…

BACKGROUND: Tubal ligation is a protective factor for ovarian cancer, but it is unknown whether this protection extends to all invasive histological subtypes or borderline tumors. We undertook an international collaborative study to examine…

The application of paired-end next generation sequencing approaches has made it possible to systematically characterize rearrangements of the cancer genome to base-pair level. Utilizing this approach, we report the first detailed analysis o…

OBJECTIVE: To examine the association between gynecological conditions (including uterine fibroids, endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease and infections of the tubes/womb), and risk of endometrial cancer overall and by histological sub…

Endometrioid and clear cell subtypes of ovarian cancer are both known to be closely associated with endometriosis and endometrial pathology, and so have often been combined in studies of causation. We have examined these ovarian cancers sep…

Over 22,000 cases of ovarian cancer were diagnosed in 2007 in the United States, but only a fraction of them can be attributed to mutations in highly penetrant genes such as BRCA1. To determine whether low-penetrance genetic variants contri…

Chronic inflammation has been proposed as the possible causal mechanism that explains the observed association between certain risk factors, such as the use of talcum powder (talc) in the pelvic region and epithelial ovarian cancer. To addr…

Chronic inflammation has been proposed as the possible causal mechanism that explains the observed association between certain risk factors, such as the use of talcum powder (talc) in the pelvic region and epithelial ovarian cancer. To addr…