African-American Women Have the More Aggressive Breast Cancers
As compared to Caucasian women at the time of diagnosis, African-American women have been found to have the more aggressive breast cancers.
Such were the findings of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson in Philadelphia in a study of more than 2,200 women which provides additional evidence to the continuing need for earlier breast cancer screenings for African-American women.
When all stages of breast cancer in the Jefferson patients were analyzed, the results showed that African American women had tumors that were more often estrogen-receptor negative (48 percent versus 37 percent), had higher rates of expression of the growth-promoting gene Ki-67 and higher expression of a tumor inhibiting gene, p53. A more aggressive type of tumor, called the “triple negative,” was found in 21 percent of African American women versus 10 percent of Caucasians.
Not necessarily that there are more African-American women with breast cancer but African American women die from the disease at a higher rate – because they often get the more aggressive types.
Not to scare African-American women, but detecting early breast cancer at its earliest stage, I guess makes all the difference in statistics such as this.
Findings have recently been reported online in the journal CANCER.
Read the full report.
Tags: African-American-women, breast-cancer, breast-cancer-types, Caucasian-womenRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Breast cancer
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