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Black women are likely to develop breast cancer two decades earlier than their white contemporaries, the first UK study of its kind says.
Researchers found that black patients had breast cancer diagnosed on average at 46 while white patients had a diagnosis at an average age of 67.
The study, published online in the British Journal of Cancer, involved 102 black British women and 191 white women who had breast cancer diagnosed at Homerton University Hospital in Hackney, East London, between 1994 and 2005.
Researchers, based at the Institute of Cancer, Cancer Research UK’s clinical centre at Barts and the London School of Medicine, also found that survival was poorer among black women with smaller tumours.
In addition, their early findings suggest that tumours in the younger black patients were more likely to be aggressive, and a higher proportion of tumours were basal-like – meaning that they were less likely to respond to newer types of targeted breast cancer treatments such as Herceptin. If these
results are confirmed in larger studies, the findings could have implications for diagnosis, screening and treatment of black patients in the future, they said. While it is known that breast cancer affects more white women than black, cancer registries have only recently started to collect ethnicity data. There is little understanding of if, and indeed how, ethnic heredity affects the development of the disease.
The study compared women of broadly similar socioeconomic backgrounds in an effort to make sure that other external factors did not unduly influence the results.
More than 44,000 women have breast cancer diagnosed every year in the UK and 1,000 die each month.
Rebecca Bowen, the study’s author, said that 25 per cent of all breast cancer cases diagnosed in the study were in women aged 45, or younger. This figure rose to 45 per cent among the black population in Hackney.
“We think the differences in the way tumours of black and white women behave can be put down to the biological differences between the two ethnic groups,” she added.
“We’re now trying to find out why the tumours are so different so that we can develop new treatments to target the aggressive forms of breast cancer seen in young black women.”
Lesley Walker, of Cancer Research UK, said that the ethnic differences in breast cancer were clearly worrying. “If these results are confirmed in follow-up studies, it might be appropriate to alter screening services offered to black women to better reflect the age at which they are diagnosed with breast cancer but at the moment it’s too early to suggest any changes to the screening programme because the study was so small.”
In the UK, women aged between 50 and 70 are offered breast screening. The programme is being extended to include women aged from 47 to 73.
The results emerged as two of the UK’s leading cancer charities announced the first UK-based clinical trial to improve treatments into the particularly aggressive form of breast cancer typically found in younger women and those of African ethnicity.
Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Cancer Research UK have launched the first UK-based clinical trial to improve treatments for basal-like tumours, also known as oestrogen and HER2-negative tumours, and triple negative tumours. The trial will compare the women’s responses to the drug carboplatin, which is not normally used to treat breast cancer, with docetaxel, the current treatment for HER2-negative tumours.