Susan E Carozza

Oregon State University | OSU · School of Biological and Population Health Sciences

Background There is a well-recognized male excess in childhood cancer incidence; however, it is unclear whether there is etiologic heterogeneity by sex when defined by epidemiologic risk factors.Methods Using a 5-state registry-linkage study (cases n = 16,411; controls n = 69,816), we estimated sex-stratified odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence int...

Importance Birth defects affect approximately 1 in 33 children. Some birth defects are known to be strongly associated with childhood cancer (eg, trisomy 21 and acute leukemia). However, comprehensive evaluations of childhood cancer risk in those with birth defects have been limited in previous studies by insufficient sample sizes. Objectives To i...

Background: Infant leukaemia (IL) is extremely rare with fewer than 150 cases occurring each year in the United States. Little is known about its causes. However, recent evidence supports a role of de novo mutations in IL aetiology. Parental age has been associated with several adverse outcomes in offspring, including childhood cancers. Given the...

Background The presence of a congenital anomaly is associated with increased childhood cancer risk, likely due to large effects of Down syndrome and chromosomal anomalies for leukemia. Less is known about associations with presence of non-chromosomal anomalies. Methods Records of children diagnosed with cancer at <20 years of age during 1984–2013...

Major anomalies among childhood cancer cases diagnosed by ages 5 or 10 years, and their controls, by selected time periods. (DOCX)

Major and minor congenital malformation ascertainment based on birth certificates and hospital discharge record for the infant’s birth.[13] (DOCX)

Silicone polymers are used for a wide array of applications from passive samplers in environmental studies, to implants used in human augmentation and reconstruction. If silicone sequesters toxicants throughout implantation, it may represent a history of exposure and potentially reduce the body burden of toxicants influencing the risk of adverse he...

Background: High birthweight is an established risk factor for childhood leukaemia. Its association with other childhood cancers is less clear, with studies hampered by low case numbers. Methods: We used two large independent datasets to explore risk associations between birthweight and all subtypes of childhood cancer. Data for 16 554 cases and...

Background Acute leukemia is extremely rare in the first year of life: about 150 cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Clinical and molecular studies of infant acute leukemia (IAL) suggest a distinct etiology and provide strong evidence of an in utero origin. Little is known about IAL etiology; however, advanced maternal age (adjusted...

IntroductionThe purpose of this study was to identify the predictors of personal flotation device (PFD) use among workers in the Alaska commercial fishing industry.Methods This study analyzed data from a questionnaire administered to fishing industry workers on four types of commercial fishing vessels in Alaska. Workers' risk perceptions of falling...

Birth defects may influence the risk of childhood cancer development through a variety of mechanisms. The rarity of both birth defects and childhood cancers makes it challenging to study these associations, particularly for the very rare instances of each. To address this limitation, the authors conducted a record linkage-based cohort study among T...

Carcinomas in children are rare and have not been well studied. We conducted a population-based case-control study and examined associations between birth characteristics and childhood carcinomas diagnosed from 28 days to 14 years during 1980-2004 using pooled data from five states (NY, WA, MN, TX, and CA) that linked their birth and cancer registr...

The causes of childhood cancers are largely unknown. Birth order has been used as a proxy for prenatal and postnatal exposures, such as frequency of infections and in utero hormone exposures. We investigated the association between birth order and childhood cancers in a pooled case-control dataset. The subjects were drawn from population-based regi...

Little has been reported on socioeconomic (SES) patterns of risk for most forms of childhood cancer. Population-based case-control data from epidemiological studies of childhood cancer conducted in five US states were pooled and associations of maternal, paternal and household educational attainment with childhood cancers were analysed. Odds ratios...

Children of different racial/ethnic backgrounds have varying risks of cancer. However, to the authors' knowledge, few studies to date have examined cancer occurrence in children of mixed ancestry. This population-based case-control study examined cancer among children aged <15 years using linked cancer and birth registry data from 5 US states from...

Cancer is the most common fatal disease among US children. The fetus has reduced resistance to toxic injury and is especially prone to mutagenic injury because of the high rate of cell division. A fetus can be exposed to environmental toxins through maternal consumption of contaminated water. The objective of this study was to estimate the incidenc...

(1) Determine if there is an association between 3 conotruncal heart birth defects and urban/rural residence of mother. (2) Compare results using different methods of measuring urban/rural status. Data were taken from the Texas Birth Defects Registry, 1999-2003. Poisson regression was used to compare crude and adjusted birth prevalence. Based on re...

The etiology of orofacial clefts is complex and relatively unknown. Variation in cleft lip with or without palate (CLP) and cleft palate alone (CP) was examined in Texas across urban-rural residence (1999 to 2003). Cases came from the Texas Birth Defects Registry (1,949 CLP and 1,054 CP) and denominator data came from vital records (254 counties; 1...

Little is known about risk factors for childhood rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS) and the histology-specific details are rare. Case-control studies formed by linking cancer and birth registries of California, Minnesota, New York, Texas and Washington, which included 583 RMS cases (363 embryonal and 85 alveolar RMS) and 57 966 randomly selected control subjec...

There is conflicting information on the association between urban/rural residence of mothers and atrial septal defect (ASD) or ventricular septal defect (VSD) in their offspring. Few studies have compared multiple measures of urban/rural residence. Data were taken from the Texas Birth Defects Registry, 1999-2003. Poisson regression was used to comp...

The risk of hepatoblastoma is strongly increased among children with very low birth weight (<1500 g). Because data on very low birth weight and other childhood cancers are sparse, we examined the risk of malignancy with very low birth weight in a large data set. We combined case-control data sets created by linking the cancer and birth registries o...

Few risk factors for childhood cancer are well-established. We investigated whether advancing parental age increases childhood cancer risk. We assessed the relationship between parental age and childhood cancer in a case-control study using pooled population-based data. Our pooling was based on linked cancer and birth registry records from New York...

Neural tube birth defects (NTDs) affect more than 4000 pregnancies in the US annually. The etiology of NTDs is believed to be multifactorial, but much remains unknown. We examined the pattern and magnitude of urban-rural variation in anencephaly, spina bifida without anencephaly, and encephalocele in Texas in relation with urban-rural residence for...

Although several studies have found no change or a decreased risk of childhood cancer in twins, few have controlled for potential confounders such as birth weight. We examined the association of birth plurality and childhood cancer in pooled data from five U.S. states (California, Minnesota, New York, Texas, and Washington) using linked birth-cance...

Previous research suggests there may be a hormonal influence on glioma risk as evidenced by lower rates in females, change in incidence rates around ages at menarche and menopause, and presence of hormone receptors in glial tumors. Using the large San Francisco Bay Area Adult Glioma Study, we investigated whether reported reproductive factors and h...

Childhood cancer has been linked to a variety of environmental factors, including agricultural activities, industrial pollutants and population mixing, but etiologic studies have often been inconclusive or inconsistent when considering specific cancer types. More specific exposure assessments are needed. It would be helpful to optimize future studi...

Agricultural pesticide applications have the potential for significant drift beyond the target spray area and may result in exposure to non-farming residents in surrounding communities. Using geographic information system (GIS) methods, 1778 childhood cancer cases and 1802 controls born in Texas between 1990 and 1998 were assigned probable agricult...

The potential for widespread exposure to agricultural pesticides through drift during application raises concerns about possible health effects to exposed children living in areas of high agricultural activity. We evaluated whether residence in a county with greater agricultural activity was associated with risk of developing cancer in children < 1...

Spatial modeling of rare diseases, such as childhood cancer, has been hampered by imprecise risk estimates. Recent developments in Bayesian hierarchical modeling include the ability to adjust a disease risk estimate to be fully conditional for covariance among neighboring locations and for covariance among multiple diseases within each location. Th...

X-ray cross complementing group 1 (XRCC1) and O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) are pivotal repair genes focused on repairing lesions due to ionizing radiation, alkylating agents, and oxidative DNA damage, risk factors previously linked to gliomas. Using the population based San Francisco Adult Glioma study, we evaluated associations be...

With few established risk factors, cancer remains the second leading cause of death for children in the U.S. Agricultural pesticide use is one of many suspected factors that may contribute to the etiology of childhood cancer. This study tests the hypothesis that birth in Texas counties with moderate to intense agricultural activity increases childh...

Current and comprehensive data on cancer incidence in US Latinos has been limited. Using a standardized approach to uniformly assign Hispanic/Latino race/ethnicity to cancer records, data from 15 central cancer registries, representing more than 85% of the US Latino population, were included in the analysis. Average annual age-adjusted incidence ra...

Driving among children and adolescents below the legal driving age in Texas was examined. There were 4170 accidents between 1995 and 2000 (66.5% involved injury/fatality). Drivers were more often male, and underage driving was greatest during the late afternoon/early evening. Risk of severe injury or death was inversely related to speed and nightti...

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effects on alcohol-involved traffic crashes and fatalities of the 0.08 blood alcohol concentration (BAC) per se law introduced in the state of Texas in 1999. Data pertaining to alcohol-involved traffic crashes and fatalities were extracted from two datasets: the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (...

The etiology of gliomas is not well understood. Some jobs might involve sustained and elevated exposures to carcinogens. This study compares lifetime job histories of 879 glioma cases diagnosed between August 1991 to April 1994 and May 1997 to August 1999 in the San Francisco Bay Area and 864 controls. Logistic analyses compared longest and ever he...

To examine cancer incidence patterns among adolescents and young adults in the United States. Cancer incidence data from 26 population-based central cancer registries for 1992-1997 were used. Individual cancers were grouped into specific diagnostic groups and subgroups using an integrated classification scheme. The integrated scheme was developed f...

To investigate the relationship between birth weight and risk of early age childhood cancer and whether racial differences in birth weight distribution could explain differences in the incidence of cancer in white, Hispanic, and black children. We compared birth weights of 268 children younger than five years old and diagnosed with cancer in the St...

Objective: To investigate the relationship between birth weight and risk of early age childhood cancer and whether racial differences in birth weight distribution could explain differences in the incidence of cancer in white, Hispanic, and black children. Methods: We compared birth weights of 268 children younger than five years old and diagnosed w...

Subsite specific incidence rates of colorectal cancer vary considerably by age, gender, and race. This variation may be related not only to distinctions in exposure to genetic and environment factors but also to current strategies of early detection screening. Patterns of stage of disease in anatomic subsite may reflect the effect of screening. Thi...

BACKGROUND Subsite specific incidence rates of colorectal cancer vary considerably by age, gender, and race. This variation may be related not only to distinctions in exposure to genetic and environment factors but also to current strategies of early detection screening. Patterns of stage of disease in anatomic subsite may reflect the effect of scr...

Lifetime job histories from a population-based, case-control study of gliomas diagnosed among adults in the San Francisco Bay area between August 1991 and April 1994 were evaluated to assess occupational risk factors. Occupational data for 476 cases and 462 controls were analyzed, with adjustment for age, gender, education, and race. Imprecise incr...

A population-based series of incident cases of malignant glioma were analyzed for mutations in the tumor suppressor gene p53. Exons 4-8 were screened using PCR-single-strand conformation analysis and confirmed through direct sequencing. Of 62 tumors analyzed, 12 (19%) contained mutations in p53: one 18-bp duplication in exon 5, five point mutations...

Case reviews and retrospective analyses have raised the possibility of an increased frequency of primary lung carcinoma in HIV- and AIDS-infected patients. Conclusions have often been controversial and conflicting. We conducted a population-based epidemiologic study to assess the incidence of lung neoplasms in an HIV/AIDS cohort. The Texas Departme...

Background: Animal models suggest that compounds containing a nitrosyl group (N-nitroso compounds (NNO)) can act as potent transplacental carcinogens. Many common drug formulations have the potential to undergo nitrosation in vivo. The association between maternal use of nitrosatable drugs during pregnancy and development of brain tumours in the o...

Canadian rates are not compared with those of the U.S. in all analyses due to inconsistencie s between the coding systems in two Canadian provinces and all other areas. The cancer sites affected most in childhood cancer by these discrepancies are non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Wilms' tumor, astrocytoma , medulloblastoma, gonadal and germ cell tumors, and...