The most common adult primary intracranial neoplasms are meningiomas. The age-adjusted incidence of meningiomas reported in the United States is 12 per 100,000 women per year and it continues to increase, according to the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States.
Since many of our cancer registries collect meningiomas and include them as a class of case 60, I thought the recent finding of association between meningiomas and breast cancer was important (Degeneffe A, et al., The association between meningioma and breast cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open. 2023;6(6), doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen).
A systematic literature search was performed up to April 2023 to identify articles showing an association of meningioma with breast cancer. All studies reporting women diagnosed with meningioma and breast cancer were identified.
Thirteen studies revealed a significantly greater prevalence of breast cancer in female patients with meningioma than in the overall population (odds ratio [OR], 9.87; 95%CI, 7.31-13.32). This large systematic review on the association between meningioma and breast cancer found a nearly 10-fold higher odds of breast cancer in female patients with meningioma compared with the general female population.
Further research is required to identify the factors causing this association. Obviously, this information is important for breast cancer screening studies and supports the concept of collecting certain benign tumors in our registries.
