The preventable burden of breast cancers for premenopausal and postmenopausal women in Australia: a pooled cohort study

Estimates of the future breast cancer burden preventable through modifications to current behaviours are lacking. We assessed the effect of individual and joint behaviour modifications on breast cancer burden for premenopausal and postmenopausal Australian women, and whether effects differed between population subgroups. We linked pooled data from six Australian cohort studies (N=214,536) to national cancer and death registries, and estimated the strength of the associations between behaviours causally related to cancer incidence and death using adjusted proportional hazards models. We estimated exposure prevalence from representative health surveys. We combined these estimates to calculate Population Attributable Fractions (PAFs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs), and compared PAFs for population subgroups. During the first 10‐years follow‐up, there were 640 incident breast cancers for premenopausal women, 2,632 for postmenopausal women, and 8,761 deaths from any cause. Of future breast cancers for premenopausal women, any regular alcohol consumption explains 12.6% (CI=4.3‐20.2%), current use of oral contraceptives for ≥5 years 7.1% (CI=0.3‐13.5%), and these factors combined 18.8% (CI=9.1‐27.4%). Of future breast cancers for postmenopausal women, overweight or obesity (BMI ≥25 kg/m²) explains 12.8% (CI=7.8‐17.5%), current use of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) 6.9% (CI=4.8‐8.9%), any regular alcohol consumption 6.6% (CI=1.5‐11.4%), and these factors combined 24.2% (CI=17.6‐30.3%). The MHT‐related postmenopausal breast cancer burden varied by body fatness, alcohol consumption and socio‐economic status, the body fatness‐related postmenopausal breast cancer burden by alcohol consumption and educational attainment, and the alcohol‐related postmenopausal breast cancer burden by breast feeding history. Our results provide evidence to support targeted and population‐level cancer control activities.

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