Breast cancer worse for black women, study says

Black women are diagnosed with more- advanced and more-aggressive breast tumors than white women, according to a Philadelphia hospital study that suggests biology is a major reason for racial differences in breast cancer.

Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital found black women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast tumors that have more biological characteristics of severe disease. The study is published in Cancer, a journal of the American Cancer Society.

Previous research shows that black women have a 67 percent higher chance of dying from breast cancer, even though fewer black women are diagnosed with the disease than white women. U.S. studies of racial differences in breast cancer have led researchers to conclude that being black may be a "prognostic indicator of worse outcome," in the disease, the study said.

"The reasons are not necessarily related to socioeconomic and demographic differences," Gloria Morris, a medical oncologist at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and the study's lead author, said in an interview. "Now there is a strongly emerging biological basis that African Americans are more likely to have more aggressive tumors."

Researchers compared data from the Thomas Jefferson University Hospital database of 2,230 with a National Cancer Institute database of 197,274 women. The scientists found that the hospital's data reflected national findings.

Breast Cancer Deaths

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer, and the leading cause of cancer death in black women. About 178,480 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year in the U.S., and 40,970 women are expected to die from the disease, according to American Cancer Society estimates.

In the hospital study, an analysis of tumor samples found those from black women contained more of the biological or genetic features associated with aggressive disease. For example, the study found 48 percent of black women had harder-to-treat estrogen-negative disease compared with 37 percent of white women. Also, 42 percent of black women had higher rates of genes linked to poor prognosis compared with 29 percent of white women.

Previous research suggests many reasons behind the racial differences in breast cancer death rates and more-severe disease at diagnosis, including socioeconomic, according to researchers. Previous studies suggest that black women may get fewer mammograms to screen for the disease. Others suggest that minority women may be less likely to receive the same range of treatments because of health complications and lack of insurance.

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