A study of breast cancer patients aged 40 and under found that just 71 per cent of black women survived for five years after diagnosis, compared with 82 per cent of white women.
Some of the difference could be explained by the fact that black patients had larger and more aggressive tumours on average, and were at greater risk of "triple negative" cancer which does not respond to hormone therapy. But these factors alone did not account for the sizeable difference between ethnic groups despite each having the same access to health care, the study of 2,915 women found.
It suggests that other factors, which could include biological differences, a lower awareness of symptoms or even cultural differences, could be contributing to the problem. For example, language barriers could prevent recent immigrants from accessing health care, they suggested, while some research suggests black women are less likely to self-check for lumps than other ethnic groups.
The study confirmed previous research that showed that black women tend to have more aggressive tumours. It also found that breast cancer was more likely to reoccur in black women. In general, young black women had poorer relapse-free survival compared with young white women, even after the researchers adjusted their findings for factors such as body mass index, tumour size and whether the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes.
There were no significant differences in overall survival or breast cancer reoccurrence between white and Black women. Further research is needed to understand why black women had poorer outcomes, and what can be done to improve their chances. The researchers speculate that there could be both genetic and social factors involved, citing, for example, that immigrant women may be less likely to register with a GP.
This study has found that young black women had poorer five-year overall survival and relapse-free survival than young white women. Outcomes remained worse even after factors which could potentially influence the results were taken into account.There were no significant differences in overall survival or breast cancer reoccurrence between women of white and Asian ethnicity.
This study compared outcomes of different ethnic groups in an age group that is not eligible for breast screening and in a population that receives entirely public-funded healthcare, thus eliminating a number of potential confounding socio-economic factors. However, although the proportion of black patients in the cohort is similar to the English population as a whole, the cohort only contained a small number of black and Asian women.
Further research will be required to determine why these black women may have had poorer outcomes, and whether steps can be taken to improve cancer outcomes for black women.
|
|
