Breast Cancer Treatment: Blacks Fare Worse
Reported April 07, 2010
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — African-American women are less likely to survive advanced breast cancer than white or Hispanic women, regardless of whether they receive radiation therapy or not.
UC Davis researcher Steve Martinez found in new research that although both African-American and Hispanic women are less likely to receive radiation therapy for advanced breast cancer, only African-American patients have poorer survival rates than white patients.
“Hispanic patients were not significantly different from white patients in overall survival rates, but black patients did worse,” Martinez was quoted as saying. “This survival disparity seen in black patients was unrelated to whether or not they received radiation therapy as part of their treatment.”
Martinez is working to find out how to address the imbalances in cancer burden across patient populations.
In one study, Martinez looked at data from more than 12,000 women across the country who had breast cancer that had spread to 10 or more lymph nodes and had undergone lumpectomy or mastectomy — patients that, he says, should have all undergone radiation therapy. He found Hispanic patients were 20 percent less likely to get radiation treatment than white patients and black patients were 24 percent less likely.
In a second study, Martinez found white women treated with radiation for advanced breast cancer had an 11 percent boost in survival while black patients had only a 3 percent improvement.
“We are trying to see which treatments work best for which people,” Martinez said. “Ultimately, we can figure out treatments that may work well for you, but not for someone else. This is a step on that path.”
Source: Presented at the Association for Clinical Research Training and the Society for Clinical and Translational Science meeting on April 6, 2010; Washington, D.C.