Several large epidemiological studies in the Nordic countries have failed to confirm an association between age at first birth and breast cancer independent of parity. To assess whether lack of power or heterogeneity between the countries could explain this, a meta-analysis was performed of 8 population-based studies (3 cohort and 5 case-control) of breast cancer and reproductive variables in the Nordic countries, including a total of 5,568 cases. It confirmed that low parity and late age at first birth are significant and independent determinants of breast-cancer risk. Nulliparity was associated with a 30% increase in risk compared with parous women, and for every 2 births, the risk was reduced by about 16%. There was a significant trend of increasing risk with increasing age at first birth, women giving first birth after the age of 35 years having a 40% increased risk compared to those with a first birth before the age of 20 years. Tests for heterogeneity between studies were not significant for any of the examined variables. In the absence of bias, this suggests that several individual Nordic studies may have had too little power to detect the weak effect of age at first birth observed in the meta-analysis.

Seventeen patients with advanced breast cancer were imaged with a specially collimated gamma camera to study tumor uptake of 2-[18F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) before and during therapy. Fourteen patients (82%) showed increased FDG accumulation in metastatic tumors, 6/8 (75%) of axillary, supra or infraclavicular metastatic lymph nodes were detectable. In one of these cases, FDG imaging was the first method to identify axillary metastasis causing nerve compression. Also, pulmonary and liver metastases could be imaged with FDG; both in two patients. The intra individual variability in uptake was considerable in bone metastases, and some lesions remained FDG negative: 99mTc-DPD was superior in detecting bone disease. Bone metastases of the osteolytic or mixed type were better visualized than sclerotic ones. Ten patients were reimaged later to assess the effect of therapy on FDG uptake. Increased uptake was associated with clinical progression, while unchanged or diminished uptake did not predict the course of disease as reliably. This study indicates that FDG can be used to image breast cancer metastases. FDG may be valuable in monitoring treatment response, but positron emission tomography (PET) would probably be more appropriate than planar imaging for this purpose.

The degree of local synovial inflammation at baseline, evaluated by dynamic and static MRI and quantitative NC scintigraphy, is closely related to the progression of wrist joint erosions during the first 2 yrs of the disease. Furthermore, at follow-up, if no persistent clinical response is achieved, these imaging methods may help to predict future erosiveness and help in clinical therapeutic decision making.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the risk factors of benign breast disease and to compare them with the known risk factors of breast cancer in order to make inferences on the relationship between benign breast disease and breast cancer. All benign breast lesions diagnosed from the population of the city of Tampere, Finland in 1974-1977 were reclassified by two pathologists into two groups of dysplasias and two groups of tumors. In the risk analysis of 422 age-matched pairs no group of benign lesions had risk factors consistently similar to those of breast cancer. It is therefore likely that either benign breast disease is not associate with breast cancer or it is an independent risk factor, not associated with the other high risk indicators of breast cancer.

The risk of breast cancer in Finland is low (40.1/100,000) compared with the other Nordic countries. A case-control study was carried out on 122 cases of breast cancer and 534 controls between the ages of 41 and 60. It was found that age at first marriage and birth of the first child as well as the number of abortions and parity adjusted for age at first birth were associated with the breast cancer risk, whereas lactation was not. The results did not confirm the hypothesis (de Waard) that overweight and/or the size of the woman influence the risk of breast cancer.