Relationships between Family Levels of Socioeconomic Status and Distribution of Breast Cancer Risk Factors

BACKGROUND Not only the expand development of knowledge for reducing risk factors, but also the improvement in early diagnosis and treatment of cancer, and socioeconomic inequalities could affect cancer incidence, diagnosis stage, and mortality. The aim of this study was investigation the relationships between family levels of socioeconomic status and distribution of breast cancer risk factors. METHODS This descriptive cross-sectional study has conducted on 526 patients who were suffering from breast cancer, and have registered in Cancer Research Center of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences from March 2008 to December 2013. A reliable and valid questionnaire about family levels of socioeconomic status has filled by interviewing the patients via phone. For analyzing the data, Multinomial logistic regression, Kendal tau-b correlation coefficient and Contingency Coefficient tests have executed by SPSS19. RESULTS The mean age of the patients was 48.30 (SD=11.41). According to the results of this study, there was a significant relationship between family socioeconomic status and patient's age at diagnosis of breast cancer (p value<0.001). Also, the relationships between socioeconomic status and number of pregnancies, and duration of breast feeding were significant (p value> 0.001). In the multiple logistic regressions, the relationship between excellent socioeconomic status and number of abortions was significant (p value> 0.007). Furthermore, the relationships between moderate and good socioeconomic statuses and smoking were significant (p value=0.05 and p value=0.02, respectively). CONCLUSION The results have indicated that among those patients having better socioeconomic status, age at cancer diagnosis, number of pregnancies and duration of breast feeding was lower, and then number of abortions was more than the others. According to the results of this study, it was really important to focus on family socioeconomic status as a critical and effective variable on breast cancer risk factors among the Iranian women.