About the Authors

Fereshte Lotfi

Contributed equally to this work with: Fereshte Lotfi, Hamideh Rashidian

Roles Writing – original draft

Affiliations Cancer Research Center, Cancer Institute of Iran, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Hamideh Rashidian

Contributed equally to this work with: Fereshte Lotfi, Hamideh Rashidian

Roles Methodology

Affiliation Cancer Research Center, Cancer Institute of Iran, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

Maryam Hadji

Roles Formal analysis

Affiliations Cancer Research Center, Cancer Institute of Iran, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, Health Sciences Unit, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

Elham Mohebbi

Roles Resources

Affiliation Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, United States of America

Maryam Marzban

Roles Resources

Affiliations Department of Public Health, School of Public Health, Bushehr University of Medical Science, Bushehr, Iran, Statistical Genetics Lab, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Ahmad Naghibzadeh-Tahami

Roles Resources

Affiliations Health Services Management Research Center, Institute for Futures Studies in Health, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran, Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran

Eero Pukkala

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Health Sciences Unit, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland, Finnish Cancer Registry—Institute for Statistical and Epidemiological Cancer Research, Helsinki, Finland

Paolo Boffetta

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, Stony Brook Cancer Center, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, United States of America

Arash Etemadi

Roles Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Metabolic Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, Rockville, Maryland, United States of America

Kazem Zendehdel

Roles Project administration

kzendeh@sina.tums.ac.ir

Affiliations Cancer Research Center, Cancer Institute of Iran, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.