THE RELATIONSHIP OF ANTHROPOMETRIC MEASURES TO RADIOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE BREAST IN PREMENOPAUSAL WOMEN

We studied 273 premenopausal women recruited from mammography units wh o had different degrees of density of the breast parenchyma on mammogr aphy, in whom we measured height, weight and skinfold thicknesses. Mam mograms were digitized to high spatial resolution by a scanning densit ometer and images analysed to measure the area of dense tissue and the total area of the breast. Per cent density and the area of non-dense tissue were calculated from these measurements. We found that the mamm ographic measures had different associations with body size. Weight an d the Quetelet index of obesity were strongly and positively associate d with the area of non-dense tissue and with the total area of the bre ast, but less strongly and negatively correlated with the area of dens e tissue. We also found a strong inverse relationship between the area s of radiologically dense and non-dense breast tissue. Statistical mod els containing anthropometric variables explained up to 8% of the Vari ance in dense area, but explained up to 49% of the variance in non-den se area and 43% of variance in total area. These results suggest that aetiological studies in breast cancer that use mammographic density sh ould consider dense and non-dense tissues separately. In addition to p er cent density, methods should be examined that combine information f rom these two tissues.