Recent data published in the Breast Cancer Research journal shows that black women are three times more at risk from a particularly destructive types of breast cancer than other races.
The disease, know as triple negative, causes more deaths because it cannot be treated with the commonly effective drugs that work on progesterone or estrogen.
The reason for this is that the cancer strain has no hormonal receptors for the latter or for the HER2 protein that also can usually be effectively helped.
The research carried out in Boston, looked at a total of over four hundred women suffering from breast cancer, divided into different race groups, nearly half of whom were obese. The spotlight was on tumors that are triple negative and have a pretty dire outlook.
The majority were treatable with tamoxifen or enzymes that convert androgens into estrogen. Over ten percent were HER2-positive, which can be hit with the drug Herceptin, which is the appropriate therapy.
Unfortunately twenty percent were triple negative meaning there are far less drugs and treatments available to cure or even increase life expectancy. This type of tumor was not affected by age or size, the main factor was race across the board.
With this information, hopefully now research can be undertaken to try to examine the reasons why Dr. Carol Rosenberg, who was involved in the Boston study, concluded that these findings explained why the long term prognosis in black females is so low. These triple negative cancers need to be looked into to prevent future deaths for these women.
