Etiologic Heterogeneity for Cervical Carcinoma by Histopathologic Type, Using Comparative Age-Period-Cohort Models

Background: Cervical carcinomas comprise two main histopathologic types, squamous cell carcinomas and adenocarcinomas. Human papillomavirus (HPV) infec-tions are causative for both types but the respective tumors may have different carcinogenic pathways. Methods: To assess potential etiologic heterogeneity of cervical cancer by histopathologic type, we examined invasive squamous cell carcinomas and adenocarcino-ma cervical cancer incidence rates in the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database. We complemented standard descrip-tive epidemiology with comparative age-period-cohort (APC) models fitted to each histopathologic type. Results: Squamous cell tumors (n = 25,219) were nearl