Aggressive breast cancers are more likely to affect black and younger women

A new study confirms that black and younger women are at high risk of developing bad cancer that is not only aggressive but also less sensitive to treatment.

The researchers found that non-Hispanic black women were more than twice as likely as white women to be diagnosed with triple negative bad cancer, while women under 40 were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with bad cancer. Be aggressive cancer than those aged 50 years. at age 64, according to the study published in Cancer.

In their badysis of more than one million bad cancer cases between 2010 and 2014, the researchers also found that triple negative cancers occurred more rarely than before.

The researchers did not respond to requests for comments but provided a press release. "We hope this update on the epidemiology of triple negative bad cancer can provide a basis for further exploration of contributing factors in future research," said co-author Lia Scott, a researcher at the Faculty of Medicine. public health of Georgia State University.

Noting that few previous studies had gone beyond a single state, Scott and his colleagues turned to the US Cancer Statistics Database, a population-based cancer registry surveillance system. containing data representing 99% of the US population. Researchers identified 1.15 million cases of bad cancer between 2010 and 2014 among women in 39 states, including 96,749 (8.4%) of triple negative cancers.

In badyzing the data, the team found that non-Hispanic black women were 2.27 times more likely to be diagnosed with triple-negative bad cancer than non-Hispanic white women. Women under 40 were 1.95 times more likely than women aged 50 to 64 to be diagnosed with aggressive cancer.

The researchers also found that when cancer was diagnosed in women, it was more likely that it was triple negative.

The study confirms what cancer experts have observed, said Dr. Vikram Gorantla, medical oncologist at UPMC Hillman Cancer Center in Pittsburgh. Part of the increased risk in younger women may be linked to the BRCA1 gene, Gorantla said. "In addition to BRCA1, we have no clear cause for this among these women," he added.

Dr. Charles Shapiro was struck by the size of the study. "This is one of the most important, if not the largest, so far," said Shapiro, professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine, director of Cancer Survivorship and medical director of research Translational Breast Cancer in Mount Sinai New York City. "Another striking thing is that triple negative bad cancer accounted for 15% of the total, but this study showed that it was 8.4%."

This change may be due to a tightening of the definition of triple negative bad cancer, said Shapiro.

According to the US National Cancer Institute, triple-negative bad cancer cells do not have estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, or large amounts of a protein called HER2 / neu.

Although this and previous studies have shown that triple negative bad cancer is more common in women under 40, "Younger women tell me all the time that a doctor initially told them that They were too young to have bad cancer, said Dr. Elissa Thorner, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine Young Women's Breast Cancer Program. "Most of them were symptomatic. They had bumps or dumps. I often see women who have had bumps for 18 months before seeing them. "

Since young women are not examined regularly, Thorner advises them to "stay alert. Know your bads and what is normal. Make sure you have a relationship with a vendor who trusts you and who will work with you. "

Shapiro said that there was a lot of misinformation about triple negative bad cancer. "The message on the Internet is that this disease is like a death sentence," he said. "It has a higher mortality rate than other bad cancers, but between 65% and 70% of people continue to be cured with conventional treatment."

SOURCE: bit.ly/30qfAIY Cancer, online July 8, 2019.