Black Women At Greater Risk Of Deadly Breast Cancer
Posted on: Saturday, 4 April 2009, 13:55 CDT
Regardless of age or body weight, black women have a threefold greater risk of developing a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer, compared with non-black women, Boston-based researchers report.This type of breast cancer is more deadly because it does not posses receptors for the hormones estrogen and progesterone, nor a protein called HER2. This means that women with these "triple-negative tumors" cannot be helped by drugs that target estrogen and progesterone or by the anti-HER2 therapy Herceptin.
"The higher prevalence of triple-negative breast tumors in black women in all age and weight categories likely contributes to black women's unfavorable breast cancer prognosis," Dr. Carol Rosenberg from Boston University School of Medicine noted in comments to Reuters Health.
"The reasons explaining this finding are not certain, but it is possible that black women may be at intrinsically greater risk of these more aggressive tumors," she added.
There were 415 women with breast cancer studied by Rosenberg and colleagues. Thirty-six percent of the women were white, 43 percent were black, 10 percent were Hispanic and 11 percent of "other" races. Also, 47 percent of the women were obese.
Seventy-two percent of the breast tumors were estrogen receptor-positive and/or progesterone receptor-positive, while 20 percent were triple-negative and 13 percent were HER2-positive.
Triple-negative tumors, which are associated with poor prognosis, are what the investigators focused on, and they found that the odds ratio for having this tumor type was threefold greater for black women compared with white women.
Roughly 30 percent of breast cancers in younger and older black women and in obese and non-obese black women were triple-negative tumors, according to the team's report published online March 25 in the journal Breast Cancer Research.
"It was known previously," Rosenberg commented, "that premenopausal black women had more triple-negative tumors . However, there were no previous data about weight. What we found that was new was that these tumors were just as common in black women diagnosed before or after age 50, and in those who were or were not obese."
The investigators conclude, "Other factors must determine tumor subtype."
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Source: redOrbit Staff
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