A new study has reported on recent breast cancer trends and outcomes among young African-American women. While there have been improvements in awareness and treatment of young Black women with breast cancer in recent years, they are still less likely to survive breast cancer than young patients of other ethnicities.
There is evidence that Black women who are treated in top-ranked breast cancer centers with an awareness of their potentially high-risk status and the same high quality care as other patients will do just as well as those patients. However, many Black breast cancer patients are not so fortunate, and their outcomes tend to be less favorable.
The following explanations have been proposed for the disparity in survival for Black women:
- African-American breast cancer patients tend to have more aggressive types of breast cancer, especially triple negative (ER-/PR-/HER2-) disease and inflammatory breast cancer (IBC)
- African Americans are diagnosed at later stages, with higher incidence rates of stage III and stage IV disease
- African Americans are less likely have pathologic complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy
- The recurrence rate for each stage at diagnosis tends to be higher higher in African-American women compared to women of other ethnic groups
- There appear to be breast cancer-related genetic differences between ethnic groups and African Americans have the least favorable profile
- There are wide-ranging disparities in care for Black women at every step from diagnosis to treatment and follow up. While these may not be intentional, they lead to inferior outcomes.
Latest research reports on breast cancer among young Black Women
The study referenced above was designed to report recent trends and outcomes for Black breast cancer patients diagnosed under age forty. To conduct the study, the authors analyzed breast cancer incidence data from the National Cancer Database during the period 2010 to 2022 in conjunction with U.S. Census population data.
A total of 16.4 % of the 188,311 breast cancer patients under 40 during the study period were Black (compared to 11.3 % of older breast cancer patients). Young black women had the lowest increase in breast cancer incidence (5.3%) from 2010 to 2022, compared to Hispanic (27.7%), White (19.9 %), and Asian/Pacific Islander (18.9 %) women.
Young Black women were more likely to be diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer (16.3%) compared to young Non-Black women (12.1 %). Black women under forty were found to have 50 % higher likelihood of death compared to other young women. The results were adjusted for age, tumor characteristics, and breast cancer treatment. The authors conclude that young Black women have more aggressive breast cancer and continue to have worse overall survival than other young women, though incidence has remained stable over the past decade.
Please see our article on breast cancer in African Americans and the young age tag for more information.