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Reproductive Factors and Risk of Meningioma and Glioma

¹ Institute of Environmental Medicine and ² Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; ³ STUK-Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Helsinki, Finland; ⁴ Tampere School of Public Health, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland; ⁵ Institute of Cancer Epidemiology, Danish Cancer Society, Copenhagen, Denmark; ⁶ The Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-based Cancer Research and ⁷ National Institute of Occupational Health, Oslo, Norway; and ⁸ Section of Epidemiology, Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, United Kingdom

Requests for reprints: Annette Wigertz, Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Box 210, S-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden. Phone: 46-8-524-874-86; Fax: 46-8-313961. E-mail: annette.wigertz{at}ki.se

Female sex hormones have previously been suggested as possible risk factors for brain tumors, but published studies have reported conflicting results. We conducted a population-based case-control study of glioma (n = 626) and meningioma (n = 906) cases and randomly selected controls stratified on age and geographic region (n = 1,774) in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Unconditional logistic regression was used to estimate odds ratios (OR) for glioma and meningioma in relation to reproductive factors. A decreased glioma risk was associated with ever-pregnancy compared with never-pregnancy [OR, 0.8; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.6-1.0]. Meningioma risk among women ages <50 years was increased in relation to number of pregnancies leading to a live birth (OR, 1.8; 95% CI: 1.1-2.8 for giving birth to 3 children compared with nulliparous women; P_trend among parous women = 0.01). This relation was not found for older women. Breast-feeding among parous women increased the glioma risk (OR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.3-3.9 for breast-feeding 36 months or more compared with breast-feeding 3 months or less). Menopausal status and age at menopause were not associated with meningioma or glioma risk. Our findings imply that reproductive hormones may influence the occurrence of meningioma and glioma. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(10):2663–70)