A two-disease model of female breast cancer: mortality in 1969 among white females in the United States.

A mathematical model of the age distribution of breast cancer mortality was developed on the basis of the two-disease theory of breast cancer incidence. The model included representations of the time from tumor initiation to death, the competing risk effects of other disease, and differential susceptibility to each of the disease components. This model successfully predicted the single year of age frequency of breast canceomponents of this model was consistent with several epidemiologic findings. Most significantly, the age distribution of breast cancer deaths from premenopausal disease was consistent with incidence patterns in non-Western countries, where the incidence of the postmenopausal disease component was hypothesized to be lower because of nutritional differences.