Background: The association between cigarette smoking and ovarian cancer may vary according to the histologic type of tumor.
Methods: We examined cigarette smoking as a risk factor for both mucinous and nonmucinous tumors in a population-based case-control study comparing 767 incident cases of epithelial ovarian cancer with 1,367 community controls frequency matched to cases by age and race.
Results: Smoking was associated with mucinous tumors (odds ratio [OR] = 1.9; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.3-2.9) but not with nonmucinous tumors (OR = 1.1; CI = 0.9-1.3). Furthermore, the odds ratios for smokers with mucinous tumors increased with increasing pack-years of smoking (OR = 1.0, 1.9, and 2.7 for <5, 5-24, and > 24+ pack-years, respectively; P for trend = 0.01)
Conclusions: Cigarette smoking appears to be a risk factor for mucinous but not for nonmucinous tumors.