Richard G. Stevens, Ph.D.
Professor
Cancer Epidemiologist
B.S., Genetics, University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., Epidemiology, University of Washington, Seattle
Brief Chronology of Professional Career
Dr. Stevens spent 15 years at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington before coming to the UConn Health Center.
Teaching and Research
Conference session leader for HDH; Faculty advisor to students in clinical epidemiology elective; PUBH 497: Health in the Built Envrionment; MEDS30: Nature of Evidence in Scientific Research; PUBH 408: Epidemiology/Biostatistics I & II
Dr. Stevens has been working for a long time trying to help figure out why people get cancer. One of his major interests has been in the possible role of iron overload. Largely on the basis of his work, published in the Journal of National Cancer Institute and the New England Journal of Medicine, the Swedish food industry decided to cease iron fortification of flour in the early 1990s. A perplexing challenge, which Stevens began to engage in the late 1970s, is the confounding mystery of why breast cancer risk rises so dramatically as societies industrialize. He proposed in 1987 a radical new theory that use of electric lighting, resulting in lighted nights, might produce "circadian disruption" causing changes in the hormones relevant to breast cancer risk. Accumulating evidence has generally supported the idea, and it has received wide scientific and public attention. For example, his work has been featured on the covers of the popular weekly Science News (October 17, 1998) and the scientific journal Cancer Research (July 15, 1996).
Englert RC, Dauser D, Gilchrist A, Samociuk HA, Singh RJ, Kesner JS, Cuthbert CD, Zarfos K, Gregorio DI, Stevens RG. Marital status and variability in cortisol excretion in postmenopausal women. Biological Psychology, (in press)
Zhu Y, Stevens RG, Leaderer D, Hoffman A, Holford T, Zhang Y, Brown HN, Zheng T. Non-synonymous polymorphisms in the circadian gene NPAS2 and breast cancer risk. Breast Cancer Res Treat (in press)
Rosenberg DW, Yang S, Pleau DC, Greenspan EJ, Stevens RG, Rajan TV, Heinen CD, Levine J, Zhou Y, O'brien MJ. Mutations in BRAF and KRAS Differentially Distinguish Serrated versus Non-Serrated Hyperplastic Aberrant Crypt Foci in Humans. Cancer Res, 67:3551-4, 2007
Stevens RG, Swede H, Rosenberg DW. Epidemiology of colonic aberrant crypt foci: review and analysis of existing studies. Cancer Letters, 252:171–183, 2007
Stevens RG, Swede H, Heinen CD, Jablonski M, Grupka M, Ross B, Parente M, Tirnaur JS, Giardina C, Rajan TV, Rosenberg DW, Levine J. Aberrant crypt foci in patients with a positive family history of sporadic colorectal cancer. Cancer Letters, 248:262-8, 2007
Zhu Y, Leaderer D, Guss C, Brown HN, Zhang Y, Boyle P, Stevens RG, Hoffman A, Qin Q, Han X, Zheng T. Ala394Thr polymorphism in the clock gene NPAS2: a circadian modifier for the risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Int J Cancer, 120:432-5, 2007
O'leary ES, Schoenfeld ER, Stevens RG, Kabat GC, Henderson K, Grimson R, Gammon MD, Leske MC. Shift Work, Light at Night, and Breast Cancer on Long Island, New York. Am J Epidemiol. 164:358-366, 2006
Zhu Y, Zheng T, Stevens RG, Zhang Z, Boyle P. Does 'clock' matter in prostate cancer? Cancer Epidemiol Biomakr Prev, 15:3-5, 2006
Stevens RG. Artifcial lighting in the industrialized world: circadian disruption and breast cancer. Cancer Causes Control, 17:501-7, 2006
Pukkala E, Ojamo M, Rudanko SL, Stevens RG, Verkasalo PK. Does incidence of breast cancer and prostate cancer decrease with increasing degree of visual impairment? Cancer Causes Control, 17:573-6, 2006
Stevens RG, Cohen RD, Terry MB, Lasley BL, Siiteri P, Cohn BA. Alcohol consumption and serum hormone levels during pregnancy. Alcohol, 36:47-53, 2005
Verkasalo PK, Lillberg K, Stevens RG, Hublin C, Partinen M, Koskenvuo M, Kaprio J. Sleep duration and breast cancer: a prospective cohort study. Cancer Res, 65:9595-600, 2005
Papadopoulos FC, Frangakis CE, Skalkidou A, Petridou E, Stevens RG, Trichopoulos D. Exploring lag and duration effect of sunshine in triggering suicide. J Affective Disorders, 88:287-97, 2005
Stevens RG. Circadian Disruption and Breast Cancer: from Melatonin to Clock Genes. Epidemiology, 16:254-8, 2005
Zhu, Y, Brown, HN, Zhang, Y, Stevens, RG, Zheng, T: Period3 structural variation: a circadian biomarker associated with breast cancer in young women. Cancer Epidemiol Biomark Prev, 14:268-70, 2005
Ilsley, JN, Belinsky, G, Nambiar, PR, Guda, K, Zhang, Q, Huang, X, Blumberg, JB, Milbury, JE, Roberts II, LJ, Stevens, RG, Rosenberg, DW: Dietary Iron Promotes Azoxymethane-induced Colon Tumors in Mice. Nutri Cancer, 49:162-9, 2004
Hilakivi-Clarke L, Cabanes A, De Assis S, Khan G, Shoemaker WJ, Stevens RG. Low In Utero Alcohol Exposure Increases Mammary Tumorigenesis in Rats. Brit J Cancer, 90:2224-30, 2004
Stevens, RG, Morris, JE, Cordis, GA, Anderson, LE, Rosenberg, DW, Sasser, LB: Oxidative damage in colon and mammary tissue of the HFE-knockout mouse. Free Radic Biol Med, 34(9):1212-16, 2003
Turoczi, T, Jun, L, Cordis, G, Morris, JE, Maulik, N, Stevens, RG, Das, DK: HFE Mutation and Dietary Iron Content Interact to Increase Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury of the Heart in Mice. Circ Res, 92:1240-6, 2003
For an extended listing of some of Dr. Stevens's publications, perform a PubMed search.
Some media coverage of this work can be found at: http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/newsarchive/news07/nov07/graveyard.html.
Division of Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Department of Community Medicine and Health Care
University of Connecticut Health Center
263 Farmington Avenue, MC 6325
Farmington, CT 06030-6325
Phone: (860) 679-5475
Fax: (860) 679-5464
Email: bugs@uchc.edu
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