Historical and epidemiologic background of human premalignant breast disease

Premalignant breast disease in humans is a concept that admits to a broad r ange of elements and possible determinants predicting the likelihood of dev eloping breast cancer. Most of these elements are relative, such as the ris k of breast cancer for women that is 130 times that of men and peaks at a y ounger age by about 10 years. Breast cancer is clearly a stochastic, multif actorial process that evolves over many years in which we must make predict ions by likelihood. This review will present the most specially defined and reliably proven of these elements, highlighting anatomic and molecular fac tors.