Publication details

Occupational prestige, social mobility and the association with lung cancer in men

Authors	BEHRENS Thomas GRO? Isabelle SIEMIATYCKI Jack CONWAY David I. OLSSON Ann STÜCKER Isabelle GUIDA Florence JÖCKEL Karl-Heinz POHLABELN Hermann AHRENS Wolfgang BRÜSKE Irene WICHMANN Heinz-Erich GUSTAVSSON Per CONSONNI Dario MERLETTI Franco RICHIARDI Lorenzo SIMONATO Lorenzo FORTES Cristina PARENT Marie-Elise MCLAUGHLIN John DEMERS Paul LANDI Maria Teresa CAPORASO Neil ZARIDZE David SZESZENIA-DABROWSKA Neonila RUDNAI Peter LISSOWSKA Jolanta FABIANOVA Eleonora TARDÓN Adonina FIELD John K. DUMITRU Rodica Stanescu BENCKO Vladimir FORETOVÁ Lenka JANOUT Vladimir KROMHOUT Hans VERMEULEN Roel BOFFETTA Paolo STRAIF Kurt SCHÜZ Joachim HOVANEC Jan KENDZIA Benjamin PESCH Beate BRÜNING Thomas
Year of publication	2016
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	BMC Cancer
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Medicine
Citation
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12885-016-2432-9
Field	Oncology and hematology
Keywords	Life course; Occupational history; Social prestige; Socio-economic status; SYNERGY; Transitions
Description	Background: The nature of the association between occupational social prestige, social mobility, and risk of lung cancer remains uncertain. Using data from the international pooled SYNERGY case-control study, we studied the association between lung cancer and the level of time-weighted average occupational social prestige as well as its lifetime trajectory. Methods: We included 11,433 male cases and 14,147 male control subjects. Each job was translated into an occupational social prestige score by applying Treiman's Standard International Occupational Prestige Scale (SIOPS). SIOPS scores were categorized as low, medium, and high prestige (reference). We calculated odds ratios (OR) with 95 % confidence intervals (CI), adjusting for study center, age, smoking, ever employment in a job with known lung carcinogen exposure, and education. Trajectories in SIOPS categories from first to last and first to longest job were defined as consistent, downward, or upward. We conducted several subgroup and sensitivity analyses to assess the robustness of our results. Results: We observed increased lung cancer risk estimates for men with medium (OR = 1.23; 95 % CI 1.13-1.33) and low occupational prestige (OR = 1.44; 95 % CI 1.32-1.57). Although adjustment for smoking and education reduced the associations between occupational prestige and lung cancer, they did not explain the association entirely. Traditional occupational exposures reduced the associations only slightly. We observed small associations with downward prestige trajectories, with ORs of 1.13, 95 % CI 0.88-1.46 for high to low, and 1.24; 95 % CI 1.08-1.41 for medium to low trajectories. Conclusions: Our results indicate that occupational prestige is independently associated with lung cancer among men.