Abstract
The relationship between fetal growth as indicated by weight and length at birth, and cancer risk in 1080 adult Swedish women was examined. Birth factors were retrieved from original midwife records for the years 1914, 1918, 1922 and 1930, and primary cancer cases were identified by matching with national and regional cancer registries through the year 1998. A positive and statistically significant increased risk for cancer was found with increasing birth weight or birth length for all site cancer and non-hormone related cancer, defined as all cancer sites excluding breast, uterus and ovary. Addition of factors suspected to influence cancer risk, maternal proteinuria, birth order, own parity and age at menarche, did not attenuate this relation. Previously only breast cancer has been reported to be related to size at birth in adult women and this is the first study to report that cancer sites other than the major hormone-related sites may be influenced by size at birth, as measured by either weight or length at birth; these findings warrant further investigation. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.com
Similar content being viewed by others
Article PDF
Change history
16 November 2011
This paper was modified 12 months after initial publication to switch to Creative Commons licence terms, as noted at publication
References
Andersson SW, Niklasson A, Lapidus L, Hallberg L, Bengtsson C and Hulthén L (2000a) Poor agreement between self-reported birth weight and birth weight from original records in adult women. Am J Epidemiol 152,
Andersson SW, Niklasson A, Lapidus L, Hallberg L, Bengtsson C and Hulthén L (2000b) Sociodemographic characteristics influencing birth outcome in Sweden, 1908–1930. Birth variables in the Population Study of Women in Gothenburg. J Epidemiol Community Health 54: 269–278
Bengtsson C, Blohme G, Hallberg L, Hallstrom T, Isaksson B, Korsan-Bengtsen K, Rybo G, Tibblin E, Tibblin G and Westerberg H (1973) The study of women in Gothenburg 1968–1969 – a population study. General design, purpose and sampling results. Acta Med Scand 193: 311–318
Brown LM, Pottern LM and Hoover RN (1986) Prenatal and perinatal risk factors for testicular cancer. Cancer Res 46: 4812–4816
Daling JR, Starzyk P, Olshan AF and Weiss NS (1984) Birth weight and the incidence of childhood cancer. J Natl Cancer Inst 72: 1039–1041
D'Ercole AJ (1999) Mechanisms of in utero overgrowth. Acta Paediatr Suppl 88: 31–36
Ekbom A (1998) Growing evidence that several human cancers may originate in utero. Semin Cancer Biol 8: 237–244
Ekbom A, Trichopoulos D, Adami HO, Hsieh CC and Lan SJ (1992) Evidence of prenatal influences on breast cancer risk [see comments]. Lancet 340: 1015–1018
Ekbom A, Hsieh CC, Lipworth L, Wolk A, Ponten J, Adami HO and Trichopoulos D (1996) Perinatal characteristics in relation to incidence of and mortality from prostate cancer. BMJ 313: 337–341
Ekbom A, Hsieh CC, Lipworth L, Adami HQ and Trichopoulos D (1997) Intrauterine environment and breast cancer risk in women: a population-based study. J Natl Cancer Inst 89: 71–76
Helgesson O, Bengtsson C, Lapidus L, Merck C and Sparen P (1994) Malignant disease observed in a cohort of women. A validation of Swedish Cancer Registry data. Scand J Soc Med 22: 46–49
Hsieh CC, Trichopoulos D, Katsouyanni K and Yuasa S (1990) Age at menarche, age at menopause, height and obesity as risk factors for breast cancer: associations and interactions in an international case-control study [see comments]. Int J Cancer 46: 796–800
Janerich DT, Hayden CL, Thompson WD, Selenskas SL and Mettlin C (1989) Epidemiologic evidence of perinatal influence in the etiology of adult cancers. J Clin Epidemiol 42: 151–157
Joseph KS and Kramer MS (1996) Review of the evidence on fetal and early childhood antecedents of adult chronic disease. Epidemiol Rev 18: 158–174
Lynch HT, Fusaro RM and Lynch JF (1997) Cancer genetics in the new era of molecular biology. Ann N Y Acad Sci 833: 1–28
Michels KB, Trichopoulos D, Robins JM, Rosner BA, Manson JE, Hunter DJ, Colditz GA, Hankinson SE, Speizer FE and Willett WC (1996) Birthweight as a risk factor for breast cancer [see comments]. Lancet 348: 1542–1546
Miller AB (1978) An overview of hormone-associated cancers. Cancer Res 38: 3985–3990
O'Dell SD and Day IN (1998) Insulin-like growth factor II (IGF-II). Int J Biochem Cell Biol 30: 767–771
Potischman N and Troisi R (1999) In-utero and early life exposures in relation to risk of breast cancer. Cancer Causes Control 10: 561–573
Potter JD (1995) Hormones and colon cancer [editorial; comment]. J Natl Cancer Inst 87: 1039–1040
Sanderson M, Williams MA, Malone KE, Stanford JL, Emanuel I, White E and Daling JR (1996) Perinatal factors and risk of breast cancer. Epidemiology 7: 34–37
Socialstyrelsen NBoHaW (1997) Cancer incidence in Sweden 1994. Official Statistics, Sweden Stockholm
Stavola B, Hardy R, Kuh D, dos Santos Silva I and Swerdlow A (2000) Birthweight, childhood growth and risk of breast cancer in a British cohort. Br J Cancer 83: 964–968
Tibblin G, Eriksson M, Cnattingius S and Ekbom A (1995) High birthweight as a predictor of prostate cancer risk [see comments]. Epidemiology 6: 423–424
Trichopoulos D (1990) Hypothesis: does breast cancer originate in utero? [see comments]. Lancet 335: 939–940
Yeazel MW, Ross JA, Buckley JD, Woods WG, Ruccione K and Robison LL (1997) High birth weight and risk of specific childhood cancers: a report from the Children's Cancer Group. J Pediatr 131: 671–677
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
From twelve months after its original publication, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
About this article
Cite this article
Andersson, S., Bengtsson, C., Hallberg, L. et al. Cancer risk in Swedish women: the relation to size at birth. Br J Cancer 84, 1193–1198 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.2000.1738
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1054/bjoc.2000.1738
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
Height and Risk of Adult Cancers: a Review
Current Epidemiology Reports (2016)
-
Premature Birth and Large for Gestational Age Are Associated with Risk of Barrett’s Esophagus in Adults
Digestive Diseases and Sciences (2016)
-
Birth size and breast cancer risk among young California-born women
Cancer Causes & Control (2011)
-
Intrauterine environments and breast cancer risk: meta-analysis and systematic review
Breast Cancer Research (2008)
-
Birth weight and melanoma risk: a population-based case–control study
British Journal of Cancer (2008)