Life
Black Women and Breast Cancer
Black women have a higher risk of developing a certain type of breast cancer, one that is more aggressive and less amenable to targeted therapies such as anti-estrogen drugs (tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors) and monoclonal antibodies like Herceptin.
For white women, having several children at a young age protects against breast cancer, particularly if the pregnancies are completed before the age of twenty. Also, for white women, breast-feeding lowers the risk for breast cancer, but only very slightly.
However, according to results recently obtained from the Black Women’s Health Study, a long-term investigation with 59,000 participants, just the opposite is true for black women; that is, in black women, more than two pregnancies significantly increases the risk for aggressive breast cancer. Furthermore, breast-feeding negates this risk!
Indeed, it appears that breast cancer in black women is a different disease.
