Screening Mammograms For Younger Women Have Low Accuracy

Screening mammograms in women under age 40 result in high rates of callbacks and additional imaging tests but low rates of cancer detection, according to a study published online May 3 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Many studies have assessed mammographies for women over age 40 years, but little is known about its usefulness in younger women. Although screening mammograms are not generally recommended under age 40, about 29 percent of women between 30 and 40 reported having had one.

To determine the accuracy and outcomes of mammograms in younger women, Bonnie C. Yankaskas, Ph..D., from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues, pooled data from six mammography registries around the country. Their study included 117,738 women who had their first mammogram between the ages of 18 and 39.

The researchers followed the women for a year to determine the accuracy of the tests and their cancer detection rates. They analyzed data for both screening mammograms and diagnostic mammograms, which were performed because a woman had a warning sign or symptom, such as a lump.

No cancers were detected in women 25. Among the 73,335 women aged 35-39, the researchers found that screening mammograms had poor accuracy (sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value) and high rates of recall for additional tests. The cancer detection rate in this group was 1.6 cancers per 1,000 women.

For diagnostic mammograms, accuracy was better and the detection rate was 14.3 cancers per 1,000 women aged 35-39.

The authors conclude that in a theoretical population of 10,000 women having a screening mammogram between ages 35 and 39, 1,266 would be called back for further testing, 16 cancers would be detected, and therefore 1,250 women would have false positives.

In this population, they write, “our findings support a need for serious discussion about the appropriateness of mammography in women without the presence of symptoms.”

In an editorial, Ned Calonge, M.D., of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, notes that this “landmark descriptive study should inform women and physicians and guide research efforts” on early detection in younger women. He emphasizes that even women in the study with a family history of breast cancer had the same detection and false positive rates as women without a known family history. This calls into question he says, the recommendation of some health groups that women with a family history start screening early.

He concludes that “the study by Yankaskas et al. is a powerful reminder that we must continue to strive for better tests and better treatments…..Furthermore, we should not be satisfied with better detection rates alone. We need evidence that early detection of these cancers translates to improvements in important health outcomes.”

Fore more information, visit: http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/.

FDA Approved Leukemia Drug Shows Promising Activity In Ovarian Cancer Cells

The drug Sprycel, approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia, significantly inhibited the growth and invasiveness of ovarian cancer cells and also promoted their death, a study by researchers with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found.

The drug, when paired with a chemotherapy regimen, was even more effective in fighting ovarian cancer in cell lines in which signaling of the Src family kinases, associated with the deadly disease, is activated.

Ovarian cancer, which will strike 21,600 women this year and kill 15,500, causes more deaths than any other cancer of the female reproductive system. Few effective therapies for ovarian cancer exist, so it would be advantageous for patients if a new drug could be found that fights the cancer, said Gottfried Konecny, an assistant professor of hematology/oncology, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and first author of the study.

“I think Sprycel could be a potential additional drug for treating patients with Src dependent ovarian cancer,” Konecny said. “It is important to remember that this work is only on cancer cell lines, but it is significant enough that it should be used to justify clinical trials to confirm that women with this type of ovarian cancer could benefit.”

Recent gene expression studies have shown that about one-third of women have ovarian cancers with activated Src pathways, so the drug could potentially help 7,000 ovarian cancer patients every year.

In this study, the UCLA team tested the drug against 34 ovarian cancer cell lines and they conducted genetic analysis on all cell lines. Through these analyses, the researchers were able to identify genes that predict response to Sprycel. If the work is confirmed in human studies, it may be possible to test patients for Src activation and select those who would respond prior to treatment, personalizing their care.

“We were able to identify markers in the pre-clinical setting that would allow us to predict response to Sprycel,” Konecny said. “These may help us in future clinical trials in selecting patients for studies of the drug.”

Sprycel is what is known as a “dirty” kinase inhibitor, meaning it inhibits more than one pathway. Konecny said it also inhibits the focal adhesion kinase and ephrin receptor, also associated with ovarian cancer.

The next step, Konecny said, would be to test the drug on women with ovarian cancer in a clinical trial. The tissue of responders would then be analyzed to determine if the Src and other pathways were activated. If that is confirmed, it would further prove that Sprycel could be used to fight ovarian cancer. In studies, women would be screened before entering a trial and only those with Src dependent cancers could be enrolled to provide further evidence, Konecny said, much like the studies of the molecularly targeted breast cancer drug Herceptin enrolled only women who had HER-2 positive disease.

“Herceptin is different because we knew in advance that the only worked in women with HER-2 amplification,” he said. “In this case, we don’t clearly know that yet. The data reassure us that the drug works where the targets are over-expressed but we need more testing to confirm this.”

The tests combining the drug with chemotherapy are significant because chemotherapy currently is the first line treatment for ovarian cancer patients following surgery. Because Sprycel proved to have a synergistic effect when combined with chemotherapy – both made the other work better – it may be possible to add the targeted therapy as a first line treatment if its efficacy is confirmed in future studies, adding a new tool to an oncologist’s arsenal.

The study appeared in the British Medical Journal.

UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has more than 240 researchers and clinicians engaged in disease research, prevention, detection, control, treatment and education. One of the nation’s largest comprehensive cancer centers, the Jonsson center is dedicated to promoting research and translating basic science into leading-edge clinical studies. In July 2009, the Jonsson Cancer Center was named among the top 12 cancer centers nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, a ranking it has held for 10 consecutive years.

For more information on the Jonsson Cancer Center, visit our website at http://www.cancer.ucla.edu.

Pregnancy Proteins May Prevent Breast Cancer

Researchers have found that hormones produced during pregnancy induce a protein that directly inhibits the growth of breast cancer. This protein, alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), may serve as a viable, well-tolerated agent for the treatment and prevention of breast cancer, according to findings published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“Hormones in pregnancy, such as estrogen, all induce AFP, which directly inhibits the growth of breast cancer,” said lead researcher Herbert Jacobson, Ph.D., who is a basic breast cancer researcher in the Center for Immunology and Microbial Diseases and in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at Albany Medical College, N.Y.

“The body has a natural defense system against breast cancer,” he added. “AFP needs to be safely harnessed and developed into a drug that can be used to protect women from breast cancer.”

Recent studies have shown that hormones released during pregnancy, such as estrogen, progesterone and human chorionic gonadotropin, reduce a woman’s risk for breast cancer. AFP is a protein normally produced by the liver and yolk sac of a fetus. Jacobson and colleagues sought to determine whether administering pregnancy hormones to carcinogen-exposed rats led them to produce AFP, which in turn produces the protective effect of pregnancy in the absence of pregnancy.

Results from this study showed that treatment with estrogen plus progesterone, estrogen alone or human chorionic gonadotropin reduced the incidence of mammary cancers in rats. Furthermore, the researchers noted that each of these treatments elevated the serum level of AFP and that AFP directly inhibited the growth of breast cancer cells growing in culture, suggesting that these hormones of pregnancy are preventing breast cancer through their induction of AFP.

Cancer Prevention Research Editorial Board Member Powel Brown, M.D., Ph.D., said while these preclinical findings are important and suggest a role of AFP in breast cancer prevention, they are not yet ready to be used in the clinic.

“The researchers have not directly demonstrated the cancer preventive activity of AFP, instead they found an association of these hormones preventing mammary tumors. None of these treatments prevented mammary tumors in 100 percent of the rats, it appears to delay mammary tumor formation and prevent breast cancer development in approximately 30 to 50 percent of the rats,” said Brown, professor of medicine and cancer prevention and clinical cancer prevention department chairman at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

“This study is promising and suggests that additional animal studies need to be done before translation to humans,” he said. “We may want to further test AFP for its cancer prevention activity.”

Jacobson and colleagues are currently conducting studies in which they have isolated a small piece of AFP molecule and are working to convert it into a breast cancer preventative agent.

For more information, visit: www.aacr.org.

Women With PMDD Respond to Stress And Pain Differently Due To Depression

 A severe mood disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), affects 5 percent to 7 percent of all women of reproductive age in the United States, but it is often misdiagnosed as major depression or other mood disorder.

A recent study further establishes that PMDD is biologically different from premenstrual symptoms, and that women with PMDD who have experienced depression could make up a subset.

The findings are important because they give physicians more reason to search for a more specific diagnosis and could possibly lead to more precise treatments, of which there are currently few good choices, said Susan Girdler, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine who led the study.

“PMDD is not garden-variety premenstrual symptoms. PMDD causes severe impairment in quality of life, equivalent to post-traumatic stress disorder, major depressive disorder and panic disorder, that continually cycles on a monthly basis. Some women spend half their lives suffering from this disorder,” said Girdler, who also is director of the Stress and Health Research Program in UNC’s Center for Women’s Mood Disorders.

In a study published in the journal Biological Psychology, Girdler and her colleagues measured biological responses to stress and pain.

Previous studies demonstrated that women with chronic major depression have a heightened biological response to stress and release more stress hormones, such as cortisol. And, Girdler and her group have previously shown that women with PMDD respond conversely, with blunted stress responses.

The current study is the first known head-to-head comparison of the two groups and confirmed earlier findings.

“We found the greatest weight of evidence that PMDD and major depression are really two distinct entities in terms of biological response to stress and with respect to pain sensitivity and pain mechanisms,” Girdler said.

But more important, Girdler said, was the finding that women with PMDD who also had experienced depression in the past looked different from PMDD women who had never been depressed. Only the PMDD women with prior depression had lower cortisol and greater sensitivity to pain compared to non-PMDD women with prior depression. These differences between PMDD and non-PMDD women were not seen in women who had no depression history.

“So while the study shows that PMDD is biologically different from major depression, a history of depression may have special relevance for women with PMDD with respect to stress hormones and pain response,” Girdler said.

Current treatments for PMDD are effective in only about half of women. But, Girdler says, gathering more biological clues about PMDD could expand the treatment options.

Girdler and her colleagues are currently enrolling women with PMDD who would receive free diagnostic and medical tests, and who may be eligible for treatment studies and studies providing monetary compensation. Interested participants should call the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders at 919-966-2547.

UNC recently expanded the Center for Women’s Mood Disorders to Rex Healthcare in Raleigh, where women can be seen for both a clinical evaluation and can be enrolled in research studies.

For more information, visit: www.med.unc.edu.

Convenience Drives U.S. Women To Buy Over-The-Counter Contraception In Mexico

American women who live along the U.S.-Mexico border frequently buy over-the-counter oral contraceptives from Mexican pharmacies because they don’t need a prescription and can send a friend to pick up the pills, according to a study by researchers from two University of Texas campuses and Ibis Reproductive Health.

The research, conducted in the El Paso-Juarez area, suggests there is demand in the United States for over-the-counter birth control pills and that many U.S. women would buy such contraception without a doctor’s prescription if given the option.

“The fact that many women in El Paso make use of the cross-border option suggests a substantial latent demand for an over-the-counter option at pharmacies in the United States,” said lead author Joseph E. Potter, a professor in the Sociology Department and Population Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

“Since crossing the border can be time-consuming for many, a domestic over-the-counter option would provide even more convenience than the cross-border option that’s available in El Paso,” he said.

The study’s other authors are Kari White and Kristine Hopkins of The University of Texas at Austin, Jon Amastae of the University of Texas at El Paso, and Daniel Grossman of Ibis Reproductive Health, a non-profit research organization based in Cambridge, Mass., and Oakland, Calif.

Women are now required to get a prescription to obtain oral contraceptives in the U.S. But the high prevalence of unwanted pregnancy and mounting evidence about the safety of such pills have led some to call for an over-the-counter option.

Grossman, who also coordinates a group of researchers, clinicians and advocates exploring the feasibility of an over-the-counter option for pills in the U.S., said, “This study gives us a better idea of who might take advantage of the over-the-counter option if it were available in the U.S., and it suggests that it would appeal to a broad range of women.”

As part of the study, researchers interviewed more than 1,000 El Paso women, about half of whom obtained their birth control pills across the border at Mexican pharmacies and half of whom went to U.S. clinics to get their pills.

Older women and those who were born and educated in Mexico were more likely to buy their pills in Mexican pharmacies. Women who received public assistance from such federal programs as Women, Infant and Children were more likely to go to the U.S. clinics.

Among both groups, most of the women said they believed the facility where they obtained the pills was cheaper and more convenient than the options on the other side of the border.

About 90 percent of the women who obtained oral contraceptives on the U.S. side said they trusted their clinic to give them good information (versus 46 percent of Mexican pharmacy consumers) and that they liked the other health services provided there.

Conversely, about 90 percent of the women who bought pills from the Mexican pharmacies said they wanted to bypass a doctor’s prescription and be able to send family or friends to pick up the pills.

“Making oral contraceptives available over the counter in the U.S. would add another option for women who find the clinic inconvenient or inaccessible. Our research shows that some women highly value the services they receive at clinics, and it’s important that they continue to have access to those services even if the pill goes over the counter,” said Grossman.

The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health. For more information, visit: www.utexas.edu.

HIV Preventive Gel Begins Testing With $350,000 Grant

 A gel designed to protect heterosexuals from the transmission of HIV will be tested for safety at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed), at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, funded by a $350,000 grant.

The grant will be used for 180 volunteers, women age 18-40, to participate in a 12-week evaluation of the gel’s absorption and safety of absorption into women’s tissue. The study will be conducted at LA BioMed and an additional four sites.

The grant is supported by the International Partnership for Microbicides (IPM) a nonprofit global initiative to develop products for the reduction of HIV transmission and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“IPM is committed to providing women with an affordable and self-initiating HIV-prevention strategy. The organization’s goal is to reduce the cycle of infection that has led to the deaths of more than 25 million people worldwide and orphaned more than 15 million children since 1981,” Dr. Susan Ballagh said, as she begun her recruitment of volunteers for LA BioMed’s study.

“If this gel is found to be safe, further testing will be undertaken to determine its effectiveness in preventing the transmission of HIV,” she concluded.

For more information on the study or how to become a part of it, visit: www.labiomed.com or call (310) 222-3840.

Patience During Stalled Labor Can Avoid Many C-sections, Study Shows

Pregnant women whose labor stalls while in the active phase of childbirth can reduce health risks to themselves and their infants by waiting out the delivery process for an extra two hours, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco.

By doing so, obstetricians could eliminate more than 130,000 cesarean deliveries – the more dangerous and expensive surgical approach – per year in the United States, the researchers concluded.

The study examined the health outcomes of 1,014 pregnancies that involved active-phase arrest – two or more hours without cervical dilation during active labor – and found that one-third of the women achieved a normal delivery without harm to themselves or their child, with the rest proceeding with a cesarean delivery.

The findings appear in the November, 2008 issue of “Obstetrics and Gynecology,” the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) journal.

While ACOG already recommends waiting at least two hours with adequate contractions in the setting of no progress in active labor, it is routine practice in many clinical settings to proceed with a cesarean for “lack of progress” before those ACOG criteria have been met, according to Dr. Aaron Caughey, an associate professor in the UCSF Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and senior author on the paper.

“One third of all first-time cesareans are performed due to active-phase arrest during labor, which contributes to approximately 400,000 surgical births per year,” said Caughey, who is affiliated with the UCSF National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health. “In our study, we found that just by being patient, one third of those women could have avoided the more dangerous and costly surgical approach.”

The cesarean delivery rate reached an all-time high in 2006 of 31.1 percent of all deliveries, according to the UCSF study. Arrest in the active phase of labor has been previously shown to raise the risk of cesarean delivery between four- and six-fold.

“Cesarean delivery is associated with significantly increased risk of maternal hemorrhage, requiring a blood transfusion, and postpartum infection,” Caughey said. “After a cesarean, women also have a higher risk in future pregnancies of experiencing abnormal placental location, surgical complications, and uterine rupture.”

The ten-year study identified all women who experienced what is known as active-phase arrest during their delivery at UCSF from 1991 to 2001. The study only included women with live, singleton deliveries who were delivered full-term.

The researchers examined maternal outcomes such as maternal infection, endomyometritis, postpartum hemorrhage and the need for blood transfusions. It also examined the infant’s Apgar score, rates of infection and frequency of admission to the neonatal intensive care unit, among other health indicators.

The study found an increased risk of maternal health complications in the group that underwent cesarean deliveries, including postpartum hemorrhage, severe postpartum hemorrhage and infections such as chorioamnionitis and endomyometritis, but found no significant difference in the health outcomes of the infants.

The study concluded that efforts to continue with a normal delivery can reduce the maternal risks associated with cesarean delivery, without a significant difference in the health risk to the infant.

“Given the extensive data on the risk of cesarean deliveries, both during the procedure and for later births, prevention of the first cesarean delivery should be given high priority,” Caughey said.

Funding for these studies came from research funds from the National Institutes of Health for Henry and Kaimal. Caughey is supported by a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development grant and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

For more information, please visit: www.ucsf.edu.

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Women Likely To Experience Non-Traditional Stroke Symptoms

The traditional stroke symptoms are well known and include a sudden onset of numbness or weakness on one side of the body, trouble talking, loss of vision, or coordination problems. But in women, doctors and bystanders should be paying attention to something else, said Dr. Lynda Lisabeth, researcher in the department of neurology at the University of Michigan Health System (U-M).

“What we’re finding is that women experience what is considered non-traditional symptoms,” said Lisabeth, who presented research findings on acute stroke symptoms at the 2009 International Stroke Conference this spring. “The non-traditional symptom that stood out was altered mental status, meaning confusion, disorientation or a loss of consciousness.”

Symptoms such as sudden numbness of the face, arm or leg are a warning sign of what’s happening in the body during a stroke which is a loss of blood supply to the brain because of a blocked or ruptured artery.

While larger scale studies focusing on stroke in women are warranted, the gender differences U-M researchers identified may contribute to delay in treatment for women and could signal a need to change public health campaigns, Lisabeth said.

The U-M study examined ischemic strokes, the kind experienced by 80 percent of stroke victims, and transient ischemic attack, called mini-strokes because symptoms go away quickly. Researchers examined the cases of 461 men and women and classified their symptoms as either traditional or non-traditional.

Altered mental status was the most common non-traditional symptom and it was more likely to be reported in women, the study showed. Researchers do not know why women’s symptoms were different.

But the differences in symptoms may have consequences if slow recognition of stroke signs cause a delay in treatment, the researcher said.

“The only treatment that is currently FDA approved in the United States for stroke is tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), or what we call a clot-busting drug,” Lisabeth said. “To administer tPA, people with a stroke have to get to the hospital within three hours of symptom onset. So any delay on the part of actually getting to the hospital or delays once at the hospital could literally mean the difference between getting the therapy, or not getting the therapy.”

Each year 800,000 Americans experience a stroke. Hispanic Americans and African Americans have a greater risk having a stroke, and to die from it. Intensive rehabilitation can help some overcome loss of function, but stroke remains a leading cause of disability. It is the third leading cause of death.

Men have an increased risk of stroke across most age groups. But in the oldest age groups, women’s risk is higher, and since women live longer than men, women actually have an increased lifetime risk for stroke.

Several studies have suggested that women experience greater in-hospital delays such as longer triage times, longer time to see a physician and longer times to head imaging, which is critical for the diagnosis of stroke, compared with men, and have 30 percent lower odds of receiving tPA. Causes of these disparities are unclear, but could result from the different symptom presentation in women.

“We’re hoping to understand those clinical implications and that information may lend itself to targeting stroke public health messages to women so that they can understand what it means to have one of these non-traditional stroke symptoms, and again emphasizing the urgency to seek care,” said Lisabeth, who is also an assistant professor in the department of epidemiology in the U-M School of Public Health.

For more information, please visit: www.med.umich.edu.

Physical Abuse Raises Women’s Health Costs Over 40 Percent

Women experiencing physical abuse from intimate partners spent 42 percent more on healthcare per year than non-abused women, according to a long-term study of more than 3,000 women.

And the costs don’t end when the abuse does. The study revealed that women who suffered physical abuse five or more years earlier still spent 19 percent more per year on healthcare than women who were never abused.

“Along with all the physical and emotional pain it causes, domestic violence also comes with a substantial financial price,” said Amy Bonomi, co-author of the study and associate professor of Human Development and Family Science at Ohio State University.

The study is the largest to date to examine healthcare costs and utilization based on the timing and type of domestic violence that women suffer, Bonomi said.

The study, co-authored with researchers from the Group Health Cooperative and the University of Washington in Seattle, was published online this week in the journal Health Services Research. It will appear in an upcoming print edition.

The research examined data from 3,333 randomly selected women who belonged to Group Health, a healthcare system in the Pacific Northwest.

Women in the study were surveyed about whether they experienced any physical or emotional abuse from intimate partners and if so, when it occurred. Researchers then studied patterns of health care use and costs by the women over an 11-year period, from 1992 through 2002.

“We were able to track healthcare costs for quite a long time, giving us a good picture of how much domestic violence is actually costing our healthcare system,” Bonomi said.

Women experiencing ongoing physical abuse had the highest healthcare costs — 42 percent higher than non-abused women.

“It’s likely that these women need more healthcare because they are seeking care for immediate injuries and associated health problems,” Bonomi said.

Women who had been physically abused within the last five years, but not currently, had 24 percent higher yearly health costs. Abuse that occurred more than five years ago resulted in 19 percent higher costs.

The study separately examined women who experienced psychological abuse, which included verbal threats and chronic controlling behavior.

Those suffering psychological abuse within the past five years, but not currently, had yearly healthcare costs that were 33 percent higher than those of non-abused women.

“It’s possible that it takes additional time for women with psychological abuse to seek care for their experiences,” Bonomi said.
Another striking finding was that all abused women, whether they experienced physical or psychological abuse, used significantly more mental health services than non-abused women, Bonomi said.

Women suffering ongoing physical abuse were about 2.5 times more likely to visit a mental health provider in the past year than were non-abused women. The rate for psychologically abused women was two times higher.

“This lends support to the idea that mental health providers should always ask women about their abuse history when they first come in for treatment,” Bonomi said.

But mental health was just one of several areas in which abused women used more services.

Physically abused women used significantly more primary care, pharmacy, specialty care, laboratory and radiology services.

For psychologically abused women, more services were needed in specialty care, pharmacy, and radiology.

Group Health, the healthcare system whose members were surveyed for the study, provides health and insurance services to more than 500,000 people in the Pacific Northwest.

Bonomi conducted the study with Melissa Anderson and Robert Thompson of The Center for Health Studies at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle; and Frederick Rivara of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington.

The study was funded by the Group Health Community Foundation and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

For more information, please visit: www.osu.edu.

Risk Of Aggressive Breast Cancer Subtype Three Times Higher For Black Women

Lifestyle, age and weight have all been considered as risk factors for breast cancer, taking these factors into consideration, black women face three times the risk of developing an aggressive ‘triple negative tumor’ compared to women of other racial backgrounds, a Boston University study concluded.

In the US, which has the highest rate of breast cancer in the world, the overall incidence of breast cancer is lower in black women than in white women. Yet when black women do get breast cancer, it tends to be more advanced when diagnosed, has a higher risk or recurring and a less favorable outcome.

A research team led by Dr. Carol Rosenberg at Boston University School of Medicine searched hospital records from the Boston Medical Center, focusing on 415 breast cancer cases. The team looked at clinical features particularly patient age, weight and race/ethnicity, and pathological features including the triple-negative pattern – tumors that lack expression of the estrogen receptor, the progesterone receptor and the HER2 gene.

According to Rosenberg, “The odds of having a triple negative tumor were three times higher for black women than for non-black women in the study. Previously, it was known that pre-menopausal black women had more triple negative tumors. What we found that was new was that these tumors were just as common in black women diagnosed before or after age 50, and in those who were or were not obese.”

Rosenberg added, “The higher prevalence of triple negative breast tumors in black women in all age and weight categories likely contributes to black women’s unfavorable breast cancer prognosis.”

The research, “Triple Negative Breast Cancers Are Increased in Black Women Regardless of Age or Body Mass Index,” was published in the journal Breast Cancer Research.

For more information, please visit: www.breast-cancer-research.com.