The role of pregnancy, tumour biology and treatment for cancer risk and survival in women: Integration of modern statistical methods with clinical cancer registry data

The establishment of clinical cancer registers offers a unique possibility to create large population-based cohorts of cancer patients for studies of risk and survival.Modern statistical methods are needed to solve important limitations of such detailed data, and thereby answering important complex research questions.This project will assess incidence and survival of pregnancy-associated cancer, childbearing patterns among female cancer survivors, and clinical breast cancer outcomes related to tumour biology and surgical/oncological treatments.

Register data from Sweden, Norway and the Nordic countries will be used including clinical cancer registers, birth registers, patient registers and population registers.

An important aspect of the project is the integration of modern statistical methods with detailed clinical register data to address challenges relating to timing of exposures and outcomes, time-dependent effects, confounder adjustment, competing risks and missing data.The research group involves biostatisticians, epidemiologists and clinical researchers from Karolinska Institutet, as well as researchers and register holders from Sweden, Norway and the Nordic countries.

The project is expected to lead to important clinical findings for patients, as well as synergistic effects in both Sweden and the Nordic countries through dissemination of methodologies and experiences across the countries and register groups.