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VIEW ALL NEWSBreast cancer variations by race confirmed
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New findings confirm that white women have lower rates of early-onset breast cancer and higher rates of late-onset breast cancer compared with black women. These age-related racial differences probably reflect the presence of different types of breast cancer, researchers suggest in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
To verify the existence of different age-related breast cancer rates between black and white women, Dr. William F. Anderson, from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues applied a detailed mathematical model to data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database from 1975 through 2004. The study involved 440,653 women with newly diagnosed invasive breast cancer; 34,478 women were black and 381,122 were white.
Among women who developed breast cancer when they were younger than 40 years old, rates were higher among black women than among white women, at 15.5 vs 13.1, respectively. Among breast cancer patients diagnosed when they were older than 40 years of age, the rates were higher among white women, at 281 vs 239, respectively.
The association held true for tumors of different size, grade, estrogen receptor status, and lymph node involvement. The pattern persisted after various breast cancer risk factors were considered, so the differences were not "fully explained by known risk factor variations," the researchers report.
Anderson's team recommends that future studies "assess the interaction between age and race, because it appears that "early- and late-onset types of breast cancer are distinctly different diseases."
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