(Press-News.org) OAK BROOK, Ill. - Breast cancer death rates have stopped declining for women in the U.S. younger than age 40, ending a trend that existed from 1987 to 2010, according to a new study in Radiology. Researchers expressed hope that the findings would raise awareness of breast cancer in younger women and spur research into the causes behind the change.
Breast cancer is the most common non-skin cancer and the second most common cause of cancer deaths in women in the U.S., accounting for 30% of all cancers in women. Although most invasive breast cancers occur in women age 40 years and older, 4% to 5% of cases happen in women younger than 40 years.
Statistics have shown steady decline in overall breast cancer mortality rates for American women since 1989. From 1989 to 2017, breast cancer mortality rates for all women in the U.S. decreased by 40%, a decrease attributed to improved treatment and increased rates of screening mammography use starting in the early to mid-1980s.
In the new study, researchers determined U.S. trends in female breast cancer mortality rates by 10-year age subgroups based on recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Analysis showed that from 2010 to 2017, mortality rates decreased between 1.2% and 2.2% per year for women in each age decade from 40 to 79 years but increased by a non-significant 0.5% per year for women 20 to 39 years of age.
"It's clear that mortality rates in women under 40 are no longer decreasing," said study lead author R. Edward Hendrick, Ph.D., clinical professor from the Department of Radiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado. "I estimate that in two to three years, the mortality rate will be increasing significantly in these women."
The changing mortality rate in younger women is likely related to an increase in distant-stage, or metastatic, breast cancers. The authors' analysis of invasive breast cancer incidence rates from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program found that distant-stage breast cancer incidence rates have increased by over 4% per year since the year 2000 in women ages 20 to 39 years, a much higher rate of increase than in women ages 40 and over.
Unlike breast cancer treatments, imaging recommendations for early detection vary by age. Women 40 and older are offered screening mammography for early breast cancer detection and over half of these women report being screened regularly. Screening is not done for women under 40 unless they are known to be at high risk for breast cancer.
According to the researchers, the continued decline in death rates in women over age 40 may reflect the benefit of regular screening for women in this age group. The difference in mortality trends for women under 40 and over 40 provides further evidence for the essential role mammography screening plays in decreasing breast cancer deaths, they said.
The researchers plan to continue studying these trends to learn more about why mortality rates have stopped declining in younger women.
"Our hope is that these findings focus more attention and research on breast cancer in younger women and what is behind this rapid increase in late-stage cancers," Dr. Hendrick said.
INFORMATION:
"Breast Cancer Mortality Rates Have Stopped Declining in U.S. Women Younger than 40 Years." Also participating in the research were Mark A. Helvie, M.D., professor of radiology at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Debra L. Monticciolo, M.D., professor and vice chair of radiology at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Temple, Texas.
Radiology is edited by David A. Bluemke, M.D., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, Madison, Wisconsin, and owned and published by the Radiological Society of North America, Inc. (https://pubs.rsna.org/journal/radiology)
RSNA is an association of radiologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and related scientists promoting excellence in patient care and health care delivery through education, research and technologic innovation. The Society is based in Oak Brook, Illinois. (RSNA.org)
For patient-friendly information on breast imaging, visit RadiologyInfo.org.
Scientific and public health experts have been raising the alarm for decades, imploring public officials to prepare for the inevitability of a viral pandemic. Infectious epidemics seemingly as benign as "the flu" and as deadly as the Ebola virus provided ample warning, yet government officials seemed caught off guard and ill prepared for dealing with COVID-19. Three future-oriented researchers and policy experts map out an "Epidemiological Blueprint for Understanding the Dynamics of a Pandemic."
COVID Detectives
Researchers around the world have become forensic, Sherlock Holmes-like "consulting detectives" for government officials and public health organizations. Handling tens of thousands ...
In the span of only 15 years, a small academic elite has increased its share of academic citations significantly. In the year 2000, 14 per cent of all citations went to the top one percent of the most cited researchers. New research shows that this figure had risen to 21 per cent in 2015.
The people behind these remarkable findings are senior researcher Jens Peter Andersen, Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy (CFA) at Aarhus BSS, Aarhus University, and associate professor Mathias Wullum Nielsen (former CFA, now University of Copenhagen). Their examination of almost 26 million scientific papers and four million authors has just been published in the well-established interdisciplinary journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ...
Animal owners frequently report concerns and worries relating to caring for their animal during the pandemic, new research suggests.
The study, by the University of York, also revealed owners had increased their appreciation of their animals during the first lockdown phase. The notion that people "could not live without" their animals and that they were a "godsend" or a "lifeline" in the pandemic was frequently expressed.
The study has been investigating the role of animals as sources of emotional and physical support during the pandemic. More than 40 per cent of UK households are estimated to own at least one animal.
There was consensus among participants that companion animals constituted a reliable source of support, providing unconditional love, ...
When human cells have to adapt due to a wide variety of external influences, the BAF complex plays a central role because it controls the accessibility of the DNA and thus the information stored in it. In every fifth human cancer, a mutation is found in one of the BAF complex genes. Scientists from the research group of Principal Investigator Stefan Kubicek at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences have investigated this complex in more detail using novel techniques and were able to show how quickly changes in the BAF complex genes influence the accessibility of DNA. The study has now been published in Nature Genetics.
Chromatin is a central component of the cell nucleus and refers to the material that ...
In nature, as in everyday life, we are surrounded by resonance - the phenomenon that describes how each object has a frequency that it prefers to vibrate at. The note of a guitar string and the sound of Big Ben chiming are examples of resonance.
Vibrations near resonance cause strong impacts. Bridges collapse if soldiers march in unison; a kid can 'push' themselves on a swing by moving their legs at the correct rate, and two pendulum clocks on the same table will synchronise. These examples show the enhanced sensitivity given to an object when it is provided with energy at a specific (that is, resonant) frequency. It's no wonder then that physicists and engineers are always looking for ways to use ...
Causal reasoning is ubiquitous - from physics to medicine, economics and social sciences, as well as in everyday life. Whenever we press the button, the bell rings, and we think that the pressing of the button causes the bell to ring. Normally, causal influence is assumed to only go one way - from cause to effect - and never back from the effect to the cause: the ringing of the bell does not cause the pressing of the button that triggered it. Now researchers from the University of Oxford and the Université libre de Bruxelles have developed a theory of causality in quantum theory, according to which cause-effect relations can sometimes form cycles. This theory offers a novel understanding of exotic processes in which events do not have a definite causal ...
"86 percent of the respondents rate the home office regulation as appropriate," says BfR-President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "This illustrates that people also accept changes in their everyday occupational life in order to contain the coronavirus."
https://www.bfr.bund.de/cm/349/210119-bfr-corona-monitor-en.pdf
Day-care centres and schools are still closed except for emergency care. However, this measure is judged as appropriate by a decreasing number of respondents: Since the beginning of the year, approval has dropped by 10 percentage points from 67 percent to now 57 percent. A similar development can be seen in the acceptance of the closure ...
Understanding the interaction of organisms in the evolution of species is an important topic in ecology. Insects and plants, for example, are two large groups on earth that are linked by a variety of interactions. Since the mid-20th century, theories linking this diversity and specific interactions have proliferated.
The development of new technologies and new methods has made it possible to study the interaction between plants and insects in greater detail and to reveal the impact of these interactions on their respective evolution. In a new study, an international team of researchers, including botanist Prof. Stefan Wanke of TU Dresden, has established the link between ecological changes, ...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, small and medium-sized firms (SME) have become increasingly dependent on social media as a tool for their international sales process, according to a recent study published in International Business Review. Digital communication tools seem to be most prevalent in finding and reaching new prospects and in the persuasion phase, whereas more traditional communication tools still prevail in customer relationship management.
"During the COVID-19 outbreak, small and medium sized firms have become more reliant on social media tools to reach internationally dispersed prospects and customers. Such use has helped them to overcome limitations set to face-to-face interaction by ...
In both life and music, the secret to success is love. This universal emotion stands out as the key protagonist in the most listened-to songs of all time. According to a study by Salvador Climent Roca and Marta Coll-Florit from the GRIAL applied linguistics research group (tied to the UOC Faculty of Arts and Humanities), love is central to 52 of the 71 songs that topped the Billboard magazine's year-end charts from 1946 to 2016. "Pop music is created to achieve commercial success, and evocations of feelings of love and unrequited love are powerfully attractive for all types of audiences," said the authors.
Their analysis, published in open access in ...
