Response: Re: Recent Trends in Breast Cancer Among Younger Women in the United States

Extract

We thank Dr Tarone for carefully reading our manuscript and for raising interesting points related to the complexities of breast cancer trends among younger women. Our results were not directly comparable with those of his previous study ( 1 ) because we focused on age-standardized incidence rates, that is, an age-specific weighted average that may be affected by birth cohort effects from one generation to the next. In addition, as we had discussed, the two studies were difficult to reconcile given different “study areas, time periods, analytical methods, or instability of rates involved.” We used the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program's 13 Registries Databases to analyze recent trends (1992–2004) among five racial groups. Dr Tarone used SEER's 9 Registries Databases for long-term trends (1975–2002) among blacks and whites. Given the difference between these two datasets, it is instructive to reexamine breast cancer trends using the most current SEER database, November 2007 submission ( 2 ).