2012 Publications
Cervical Cancer Studies
Cervical cancer is the focus for several studies looking primarily at the relationships between hormones, including use of oral contraceptives and hormone replacement therapy, and risk of cancer of the cervix.
Cancer of the uterine cervix is the second most common cancer among women in less-developed countries. Infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most important cause of cervical cancer but whether or not women infected with HPV go on to develop persistent infection or cancer is affected by other factors, including smoking, parity and oral contraceptive use. Several studies related to HPV infection and cervical cancer have been published by CEU researchers in recent years (see Publications).
The International Collaboration of Epidemiological Studies of Cervical Cancer was set up jointly by the Cancer Epidemiology Unit (Professor V Beral, Dr J Green, Dr A Berrington, Dr S Sweetland, Mr P Appleby) and Professor S Franceschi’s department at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Lyon, in 2003 and has carried out a series of re-analyses of individual patient data from 25 studies worldwide. The group has published its findings in a series of papers (2006-2009) on smoking, reproductive factors, sexual behaviour, and hormonal contraceptives. Comparison of risk factors for the two major histological types of cervical cancer, squamous cell and adenocarcinoma, in the UK National Case-Control study (2003) and in the international collaboration (2006), showed that while most risk factors, including use of hormonal contraceptives, are common to both types, smoking increases risk of squamous cell but not of adenocarcinoma.
Further work on cervical cancer will include investigation of the role of hormone replacement therapy and other analyses within the Million Women Study cohort.
See publications for Cervical Cancer Studies.
