Kingdom Daughterz
Breast Cancer Awareness
After losing two family members to breast cancer I decided to get involved with the Susan G. Komen foundation to get the necessary information out into the hands of other women who may be fighting this terrible disease and into other communities as a whole…
Bringing an awareness to communities at large brings a great satisfaction knowing we could have possibly helped someone else to become victorious over this disease.
Generally, women over 50 are more likely to get breast cancer than younger women, and African-American women are more likely than Caucasians to get breast cancer before menopause. A link between breast cancer and hormones is gradually becoming clearer. Researchers think that the greater a woman's exposure to the hormone estrogen, the more susceptible she is to breast cancer. Estrogen tells cells to divide; the more the cells divide, the more likely they are to be abnormal in some way, possibly becoming cancerous. A woman's exposure to estrogen and progesterone rises and falls during her lifetime, influenced by the age she starts and stops menstruating, the average length of her menstrual cycle, and her age at first childbirth.
A woman's risk for breast cancer is increased if she starts menstruating before age 12, has her first child after 30, stops menstruating after 55, or has a menstrual cycle shorter or longer than the average 26-29 days. Current information indicates that the hormones in birth control pills probably do not significantly increase the risk. Some studies suggest that taking hormone replacement therapy after menopause may increase risk, especially when taken for more than five years. The jury is still somewhat out on this matter though. Heavy doses of radiation therapy may also be a factor, but low-dose mammograms pose almost no risk.
Among postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. The likelihood of dying from breast cancer increases with age. These results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Of the more than 200,000 cases of breast cancer diagnosed each year in the United States, roughly 40 percent occur in women over the age of 65. Research that explores how breast cancer outcomes change as women age has the potential to improve care for this large group of women. To evaluate breast cancer outcomes by age, researchers’ analyzed information from a clinical trial know as TEAM. (Tamoxifen, Exemestane, Adjuvant, Multinational). The study enrolled more than 9,700 postmenopausal women with non-metastatic, hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. All women were treated with surgery and hormonal therapy. Decisions about chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy were left to the treating physician. Women were followed for just over five years.
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Death from breast cancer occurred in 5.7 percent of women under the age of 65, 6.3 percent of women between the ages of 65 and 74, and 8.3 percent of women age 75 or older.
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Older women continued to be more likely to die from breast cancer even after the researchers’ accounted for tumor characteristics and other factors known to affect outcomes.
One of the possible explanations for the worse breast cancer outcomes among older women involves treatment. Studies have suggested that older women are less likely than younger to received standard breast cancer treatments, possibly due to concern that about the ability of older women to tolerate these treatments. In the current study, for example, 48 percent of the oldest women had breast cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes, but only 5 percent received chemotherapy. Older women were also less likely than younger women to receive radiation therapy after a lumpectomy.
Although older women in this study were more likely to die of breast cancer than younger women, it should be noted that most women-regardless of their age-did not die of breast cancer. It should also be noted that all of the women in this study were postmenopausal. This study did not address cancer outcomes in premenopausal women.
Reference: van de Water W, Markopoulos C, van de Velde CJH et al. Association between age at diagnosis and disease-specific mortality among postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-postive breast cancer. JAMA.2012:307:590-597 Posted February 10,2012