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Spatial pattern and environmental drivers of breast cancer incidence in Chinese women

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Abstract   

Breast cancer (BC) had the highest incidence of all cancers in Chinese women. However, studies on spatial pattern and environmental drivers of BC were still lacked as they were either limited in a small area or few considered the comprehensive impact of multiple risk factors. In this study, we firstly performed spatial visualization and the spatial autocorrelation analysis based on Chinese women breast cancer incidence (BCI) data of 2012–2016. Then, we explored the environmental drivers related to BC by applying univariate correlation analysis and geographical detector model. We found that the BC high-high clusters were mainly distributed in the eastern and central regions, such as Liaoning, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, and Anhui Provinces. The BCI in Shenzhen was significantly higher than other prefectures. Urbanization rate (UR), per capita GDP (PGDP), average years of school attainment (AYSA), and average annual wind speed (WIND) had higher explanatory power on spatial variability of the BCI. PM10, NO2, and PGDP had significant nonlinear enhanced effect on other factors. Besides, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was negatively associated with BCI. Therefore, high socioeconomic status, serious air pollution, high wind speed, and low vegetation cover were the risk factors for BC. Our study may able to provide evidence for BC etiology research and precise identification of areas requiring focused screening.

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Data availability

Breast cancer data were collected from the China Cancer Registry Annual Report. Proxy variables data were available from the China Air Quality Online Monitoring Platform, China Meteorological Data Service Centre, Resource and Environmental Science and Data Center, China Statistical Yearbook and 2010 national census.

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Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42001164), Ministry of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences Research Youth Foundation (Grant No. 20YJC840014), and Key R & D Program of Shaanxi Province (Grant No. 2018ZDCXL-SF-02–03-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, **’an Jiaotong University, **’an, 710061, Shaanxi, China

    Wenhui Wang, Yu Wang & **n Qi

  2. Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Science, **’an Jiaotong University, **’an, 710049, Shaanxi, China

    Li He

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  1. Wenhui Wang
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Contributions

All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. WHW: data collection, analysis, and manuscript draft. YW: data collection, methods revision and statistical assistance. XQ: study guidance and manuscript review and revision. LH: manuscript review and revision. All authors have contributed to study design and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to **n Qi.

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The study used publicly available data, and consent to participate is not required. The study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board at **’an Jiaotong University.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Wang, W., Wang, Y., Qi, X. et al. Spatial pattern and environmental drivers of breast cancer incidence in Chinese women. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 82506–82516 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28206-4

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