Factors examined as potential confounders or
effect modifiers included age (at breast cancer diagnosis for cases, at time of study enrollment for controls), age at first birth, number of children, birth of a son, history of breastfeeding, miscarriage, abortion, oral contraceptive use, smoking status, age at menarche and number of cell equivalents tested for detection of FMc.
This
includes work to discover causal regulatory variants and demonstrate their activity by genome editing assays, and in - depth characterization of the
effects and
modifiers of specific variants of particular interest.