Breast cancer rates are rising sharply in the United States, driven by increases among younger women and Asian Americans, a study said Tuesday.
The biennial report by the American Cancer Society found the number of cases grew by one percent each year from 2012 to 2021, even as the overall death rate continued its historic trend of decline, falling 44 percent from 1989 to 2022.
Breast cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed among U.S. women, and the second leading cause of death from cancer, after lung cancer.
Approximately one-in-eight women in the U.S. will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in their lifetime and one-in-43, or two percent, will die from the disease.
Over the past decade, the report said, breast cancer rates grew faster for women under the age of 50 than those older -- 1.4 percent annually versus 0.7 percent annually -- for reasons that aren't immediately clear.
By race, Asian American women had the most rapid increase in incidence followed by Hispanic, which the paper said "may be related in part to the influx of new immigrants, who have elevated breast cancer risk."
Overall, the breast cancer mortality rate fell 44 percent from 33 deaths per 100,000 women in 1989 to 19 deaths per 100,000 in 2022, resulting in around 517,900 averted deaths.
But despite decades of medical advancements in treatment and earlier detection, the benefits have been felt unevenly.
Mortality has remained unchanged since 1990 among Native Americans, while Black women experience 38 percent more deaths than white women despite five percent lower cases.
The paper said these findings highlighted "disadvantages in social determinants of health" and "longstanding systemic racism and has translated to less access to quality care across the cancer continuum."
For example, although Black women report getting mammograms more than White women, "they are more likely to have screening at lower resourced facilities and/or those that are not accredited by the American College of Radiology," the study said.
The authors recommended increasing racial diversity in clinical trials as well as community partnerships that boost access to high-quality screening among underserved women.
In April, an influential U.S. medical body recommended women should get screened for breast cancer every other year starting from the age of 40.
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had previously said that women in their 40s should make an individual decision about when to start mammograms based on their health history and reserved its mandatory recommendation for people turning 50.
© 2024 AFP
22 Comments
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wallace
Peter Neil
read your comment. Being a cancer survivor myself you have my deep sympathy for your loss. My cancer op in the US would have cost me 1000 times more than I paid here.
Peter Neil
my wife, who was from okinawa, was diagnosed at age 34. after 10 years of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgeries, she died at age 44. it always returned, no matter what the treatment.
there was no family history of breast cancer, never smoked, didn’t drink, so a blanket statement about lifestyle and/or american ultra processed food doesn’t fit in her case.
i’m skeptical of the statement about non-accredited college of radiology and even the need for mammograms in many cases. this is about the u.s., where money drives everything and radiologists fall far below automated diagnoses that have been around for a long time.
the doctor did an ultrasound in the office on her initial visit and was able to find the small tumor and even able to take a biopsy then. the treatment protocol is chemotherapy to shrink the tumor, then a lumpectomy.
a mammogram would not have shown anything different, but would cost thousands of dollars in the u.s. instead of the 1,000 yen in japan for the co-pay.
the first surgery, she was in the hospital for a week, private room, and the total out of pocket was less than 80,000 yen for everything.
i credit her japanese doctors for keeping her alive for ten years. we came to the u.s., it returned, and she was gone after 4 months of u.s. treatment.
even with the most comprehensive insurance available at almost $1,000 per month, i still had almost $30,000 in medical bills after she was gone.
cancer is a big industry in the u.s.
albaleo
Is it because more younger people are getting breast cancer or because more younger people are receiving scans and so it is detected earlier?
virusrex
The article mentions that Black women are getting scans of lower quality, it would be logical to think that treatments for them also have this problem.
wallace
Do Black women and Native American women have less access to scanning, chemotherapy, and mastectomy?
virusrex
The writer of the comment is still discussing the issue with me, if you are not interested in it nobody is forcing you to address it,
And it is completely relevant, It was very easy to prove any supposed intervention would have to fit the characteristics of the observed increase in order to even be considered a cause, and if something doesn't fit then it is safe to ignore it and focus on what it does, which is also included in the article (immigrants influx).
The Ripper!
You failed to comment on the relevant issue and instead you introduced a different issue that no one but you was arguing about.
virusrex
My comment was focused in the part of your comment that can easily be investigated and for which specific therapeutic interventions can be eliminated just because they would produce a completely different (opposite?) situation. If you abandon this problematic part and now say this would make sense only for processed food why would I have a problem with that? Do you think people have to refute every part of your comment or else accept it completely? that makes no sense either.
No I don't, because there is nothing that fits your description and that has been used more by Asians (and hispanics) and more by young people than those over 50, that is the whole point. There is nothing that fits this, old people take much more treatments, and specially new treatments, since it is part of the demographic to have more health problems and preexisting conditions to treat.
Bad Haircut
My original comment included "processed food". But you reflexively homed in on the other factor I mentioned so missed it, making your reply invalid.
You know exactly what I'm talking about, but if the researchers don't want to investigate, they won't get an answer.
virusrex
Which one? remember that this would require the drugs to be given more to young patients when compared with older ones, and more to Asians that other ethnicities. Else it still makes no sense, something that is given to older people would also mean this group would have a higher rate of increase, so when the opposite is actually happening you can safely discard this etiology because it contradicts what is observed
Why would I rule those out? what part of my comment would make that necessary?
Nobody have explained this, claiming something without being able to argue would be the opposite, it would be disproving the claim thanks to the lack of arguments.
Do you have any arguments about it or just want to claim this was done and recognize you don't have them?
The Ripper!
As explained, by multiple posters, you were arguing that position.
Are you now saying you are not arguing that?
Bad Haircut
You don't know the long-term effects of a certain group of drugs that were essentially forced onto a large number of populations in the last few years, so it's a waste of time ruling them out.
And you completely avoided processed foods. Can you rule those out from have an effect as well?
virusrex
As explained, nobody is arguing that, it makes no sense to conclude this from the quoted text.
The Ripper!
Major fallacy arguing that what people put into their bodies doesn't affect their cancer risk.
virusrex
No, the comment is very clear, it is very easy to eliminate something that do not correspond to what is observed. If drug A is taken by all ethnicities in the same measure then it should be obvious it is not the case since the increase is not the same for all, If drug B is taken mostly by old people then it can be eliminated because the increase happens in younger patients.
The problem would be to invalidly assume something that does not fit the evidence must be the cause instead of logically evaluating what is observed.
theFu
The way Americans eat has drastically changed from the 1960s on. There are lots of unregulated items in our foods because nobody could prove harm directly in typical amounts, but over decades of ingestion, who knows? Americans eat huge amounts of processed things, not nearly as much from-the-farm foods as we did before the 1980s.
My family had a huge garden and we were pulling different foods from it from early June until October each year. That isn't nearly as common today.
There is a direct correlation between eating more processed foods and being overweight. Ref: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5787353/ There are "food deserts" in low income parts of cities in the US that impact millions of Americans. https://socialwork.tulane.edu/blog/food-deserts-in-america/ People in food deserts tend to eat more processed items. I don't really want to call it "food".
Bad Haircut
Are you seriously arguing that what people put into their bodies doesn't affect their cancer risk? Sheesh...
virusrex
Factors that do not explain the epidemiological differences mentioned in the article can easily be discarded, for example what dubious medication would be used more on younger patients instead of people over 50 and specifically on Asians compared with other ethnicities?
Bad Haircut
I wonder what's causing this rise? Processed food? Dubious medications?
Inquiring minds would love to know.
virusrex
There is only so much that can be done for prevention, but you never know, cervical cancer depended almost completely on early treatment but now the HPV vaccine has proved to be a hugely effective preventive measure. Maybe in the future there will be something that will also help preventing breast cancer. For now advances that let doctors cure patients when detected on time are a nice alternative to have.
wallace
Research needs to change those stats.
theFu
I'm interested in prevention, though lower cost, effective, treatments are also needed for our women. Most of us have sisters and mothers, though I have to wonder about certain people based on their behavior.