African American women have higher risk for breast cancer

 

[caption id="attachment_10136" align="alignleft" width="221" caption="African American Woman"][/caption]

by Carol Forsloff - New research has found that African ancestry is a high risk factor for aggressive breast cancer in women.

What University of Michigan researchers have found is that 82 percent of African women are what is called triple negative and 26 percent of African American women, which is the marker for determining treatment.

The ordinary treatments involving the new ways of treating breast cancer are less likely, therefore, to work for women of African ancestry.

“The most significant recent advances in breast cancer treatment have involved targeting these three receptors. But these treatments do not help women with triple-negative breast cancer. Outcome disparities are therefore likely to increase, because fewer African-American women are candidates for these newer treatments,” says study author Lisa A. Newman, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Breast Care Center at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The research on this has been published online in the journal Cancer.  It results from a study of 581 African American women and 1008 white women to observe which women were more likely t test negative for each of the three markers that provide for new treatment.

Prior research has shown African American less likely to develop breast cancer than white women.  On the other hand, those who do develop breast cancer are usually diagnosed younger and more likely to die from the disease.

“African ancestry might be associated with other links to hereditary predisposition for particular patterns of breast cancer. We hope that by studying breast cancer in African and African-American women we can identify biomarkers that might be useful for assessing risk or treating triple-negative breast cancer,” says Newman, professor of surgery at the U-M Medical School.

Breast cancer statistics: 194,280 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and 40,610 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society

Additional authors: From U-M: Celina Kleer, M.D.; Valerie Takyi, M.D.; Maria Braman, M.D.; and Max Wicha, M.D.; from Henry Ford Health System: Azadeh Stark, Ph.D.; and Richard Zarbo, M.D., D.M.D.; from University of Illinois: Iman Martin, M.P.H.; from Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital: Baffour Awuah, M.D.; Anthony Nsiah-Asare, M.D.; and Solomon E