Breast cancer rates rise among younger women

Breast cancer rates rise among younger women

What you probably already know: Women under 50 are getting breast cancer at higher rates, according to a new report out this week from the American Cancer Society. Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women — one in 50 women will develop breast cancer by the time they are 50. But the most significant increase in cancer rates was among women in their 20s and Asian American/Pacific Islander women. Both groups saw rates rise more than 2.2%.

Why? When breast cancer appears earlier, it is often harder to detect because younger women aren’t screened as often or at all. That can mean the cancer is more aggressive because it’s caught later. That said, even as incidences of breast cancer are on the rise, the death rate from the disease is actually falling, down 10% in the last decade.

What it means: Despite treatment improvements and better detection, there are demographic groups who still have worse outcomes. Black women with breast cancer have a 38% higher death rate than white women, and survival rates for Native American and Alaska Native women have not improved in the last decade. These populations tend to have higher incidences of the most deadly breast cancers, though that factor alone can’t fully explain the increased death rates.

What happens now? Overall, tumors that did not spread beyond the breast are the ones that doctors are seeing more often now. Those tumors are fueled by estrogen or progesterone, which stimulate cell growth. Those hormones are often higher in women who have never breastfed, menstruated earlier or have later incidences of menopause.