The Breast Cancer Nobody Is Talking About

One virulent, fast-acting type of breast cancer attacks more than twice as many young black women as all other women.

" landmark study by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2006 found that, remarkably, this basal-like "triple negative" subtype showed up in 39 percent of the study's premenopausal women who were African-American, compared with only 16 percent in those who weren't. A larger study published this summer in the journal Cancer confirmed that in the United States, black women overall are twice as likely to have triple negative tumors as white women. In general, this type of breast cancer has one of the worst survival rates. These findings help explain why young black women are more likely to get breast cancer early—10, 20, 30 years before menopause—and have nearly double the odds of dying from it. "

Click here to read full article by By Mary A. Fischer