Harvey A. Risch

BACKGROUND: There is suggestive evidence that inflammation is related to ovarian cancer survival. However, more research is needed to identify inflammation-related factors that are associated with ovarian cancer survival and to determine th…

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have the potential to improve risk stratification. Joint estimation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) effects in models could improve predictive performance over standard…

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…

Abstract Background: Endometriosis is a common gynecologic disorder that affects approximately 10% of women of reproductive age. It is also a well-established risk factor for ovarian cancer. Whether hormonal-related and other risk factors f…

IMPORTANCE: Breastfeeding has been associated with a reduced risk of epithelial ovarian cancer in multiple studies, but others showed no association. Whether risk reduction extends beyond that provided by pregnancy alone or differs by histo…

While childbearing protects against risk of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), few studies have explored the impact on maternal EOC risk of sex of offspring, which may affect the maternal environment during pregnancy. We performed a pooled an…

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…

Endometrial cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer of the female reproductive tract in developed countries. Through genome-wide association studies (GWAS), we have previously identified eight risk loci for endometrial cancer. Here, we…

IMPORTANCE: The causal direction and magnitude of the association between telomere length and incidence of cancer and non-neoplastic diseases is uncertain owing to the susceptibility of observational studies to confounding and reverse causa…

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…

To identify common alleles associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we pooled data from multiple genome-wide genotyping projects totaling 25,509 EOC cases and 40,941 controls. We identified nine new susceptib…

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…

Inflammation has been implicated in ovarian carcinogenesis. However, studies investigating the association between pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and ovarian cancer risk are few and inconsistent. We investigated the association between P…

BACKGROUND: Regulatory T (Treg) cells, a subset of CD4+ T lymphocytes, are mediators of immunosuppression in cancer, and, thus, variants in genes encoding Treg cell immune molecules could be associated with ovarian cancer. METHODS: In a po…

BACKGROUND: In vitro and observational epidemiological studies suggest that vitamin D may play a role in cancer prevention. However, the relationship between vitamin D and ovarian cancer is uncertain, with observational studies generating c…

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…

Previously developed models for predicting absolute risk of invasive epithelial ovarian cancer have included a limited number of risk factors and have had low discriminatory power (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC…

Disruption in circadian gene expression, whether due to genetic variation or environmental factors (e.g., light at night, shiftwork), is associated with increased incidence of breast, prostate, gastrointestinal and hematologic cancers and g…

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether endometriosis-associated genetic variation affects risk of ovarian cancer. DESIGN: Pooled genetic analysis. SETTING: University hospital. PATIENT(S): Genetic data from 46,176 participants (15,361 ovarian ca…

Epidemiological studies have demonstrated associations between endometriosis and certain histotypes of ovarian cancer, including clear cell, low-grade serous and endometrioid carcinomas. We aimed to determine whether the observed associatio…

BACKGROUND: Regular aspirin use is associated with reduced risk of several malignancies. Epidemiologic studies analyzing aspirin, nonaspirin nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), and acetaminophen use and ovarian cancer risk have bee…

SCOPE: We reevaluated previously reported associations between variants in pathways of one-carbon (1-C) (folate) transfer genes and ovarian carcinoma (OC) risk, and in related pathways of purine and pyrimidine metabolism, and assessed inter…

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…