Since Age is the Number One Risk Factor for Women, Would the Purple Colored Areas Mean That There are Just More Older People Living There?
No. We removed the effect of age at diagnosis by a procedure called age-adjustment. Each SIR represents the observed to expected number of cases controlling for age. While we know that variation in SIRs is not due to differences in age of residents, we do not know if the differences may be due to other risk factors, such as hormone replacement therapy, the average number of children born to each woman, the age when the woman began to having children, or behavioral or environmental factors. Thus, several factors could be related to breast cancer occurrence except age, since age has been controlled for statistically.
Related Questions
- Since the risk of Down syndrome is higher in older women why not avoid all this screening and just do an amniocestesis on all women over a certain age?
- Since Age is the Number One Risk Factor for Women, Would the Purple Colored Areas Mean That There are Just More Older People Living There?
- At what age should MRI screening begin for women at high risk?
