Hormones Risk Factors for Gynecological Cancers in Albanian Women

The role of reproductive factors in the aetiology of breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer had been evaluated in randomly hospital-based case-control study conducted in Albania, providing a total dataset of 981 breast cancer cases, 283 ovarian cancer cases, 222 endometrial cancer and 1019 controls. Logistic regression model were used to obtain relative risk (OR) estimates. Early age at menarche found to be a significantly strong risk factor during pre- and post-menopausal breast cancer group. Evaluation of the relationship between early age at menarche and late age at menopause, showed statistically significant increased risk in the ovarian and endometrial cancer too. The age at which premenopausal breast cancer women gave birth to her first child is increased with age at first birth. Also, nulliparity in breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer is associated with higher risk compared to those who had different number of births. These findings suggest that Albanian women have breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer risk factors similar to women in western countries that need to be studied further.