Newsletter - November 1999
Recruitment on target
Thanks to the superb efforts of breast screening centre staff and the outstanding participation of women throughout the UK, the Million Women Study will reach its target early in the next millennium.
Report from the second Collaborators’ Meeting
The second Million Women Study Collaborators’ Meeting was held on Wednesday the 26th of May at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. It was opened by Judith Church, MP, who is secretary of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Breast Cancer. She expressed her enthusiasm for the study and her gratitude to all of the collaborators for their contribution to it.The meeting was chaired by Julietta Patnick, Joan Austoker and Martin Vessey. The programme included presentations about the progress of the study (Valerie Beral and Emily Banks), the history of HRT (Emily Banks), factors affecting survival in breast cancer (Gillian Reeves) and clinical trials of hormone replacement therapy use (Madge Vickers).
Delegates to the meeting requested feedback from the Million Women Study regarding use of HRT and other questionnaire data from their centre.
Feedback
Enclosed with this newsletter is some feedback regarding study participants at individual centres, based on the data processed to date. Of the 401,028 women entered, 48% had used HRT at some time, with 32% being current users. There was not a huge amount of variation between centres, with a range of 38% – 56% for having ever used HRT, and 25% – 40% for current use of HRT.
Other statistics on factors such as hysterectomy and past oral contraceptive use are included, and if you would like to know which number represents your centre then please phone Becky Cameron on 01865 302223.
First publication from the Million Women Study
The first paper from the Million Women Study has now been published (a copy is enclosed with this newsletter). It describes the design and methods of the Million Women Study and the characteristics of the first 121,000 women recruited.
Follow-up questionnaire
A yellow follow-up questionnaire has now been designed and will be sent out from the Million Women Study co-ordinating centre in Oxford. Participants will receive the questionnaire 2-3 years after recruitment. It will be used to ascertain changes in use of HRT, and to provide information on new illnesses diagnosed since screening. The questionnaire will also give other information on participants such as early life events, diet, vitamin use and more detailed family history. The final version has been included with this newsletter.
Follow up
Follow-up is proceeding very well and the co-ordinating centre now has information on over 1500 screen-detected breast cancers in participants. The quality of the data is very high and thanks to all collaborators who provided this information.
