Breast cancer deaths are continuing to decrease among American women. Many gains have led to it being one of the more survivable types of cancer if caught early enough.
However, the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month has kicked off with an urgent report. According to a new report published by the American Cancer Society on Tuesday, even with those crucial inroads, news cases are increasing among women at younger ages.
Speaking to CNN, Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said,“If we look at the last decade or so, we’ve seen breast cancer incidence rise at about a 1% year-over-year increase, and the steepness of that increase does not affect all women in this case equally.”
She continued, “There is a slightly higher increase in the rate of breast cancer diagnosis for women who are under age 50 versus those that are above age 50. These are things that we are watching to try to understand.”
The new report found that breast cancer mortality has decreased by 44% since the late 1980s. Meanwhile, rates of breast cancer have increased by 1% every year since 2012. In younger women under 50, these rates have increased by about 1.4% every year since 2021.
“It’s not just one racial or ethnic group affected; we are seeing it across the board, so it’s hard to link it to ancestral or genetic factors alone,” Dr. Sonya Reid, a breast medical oncologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who was not involved with the report, told NBC News.
Reid explained that the rise in younger cases is hard to pinpoint. She theorizes it could be due to more than one factor, including lifestyle, diet, and environmental factors. What further concerns her and other experts is that the common practice is to start screening women when they are in their 40s.
Women who maintain regular screenings and practice breast self-awareness, becoming familiar with how their breasts look and feel on a regular basis, have much stronger odds of early detection and ultimately catching cancerous growths soon enough to survive. Depending on the risk level, including if anyone in your immediate family may have had breast cancer (a mother, sister, maternal aunt, or grandmother), screening earlier may be advised.
As experts and physicians emphasize the increase in new cases and the downward trend of fatal cases are not being felt equally, Black women remain the most likely to die by any form of cancer.
Black women are 5% less likely to get breast cancer than their white counterparts but are roughly 40% more likely to die from the disease. The American Cancer Society researchers highlighted how this contrast is seen in even the most treatable types of breast cancer.
Now more than ever, women, especially Black women, are advised to get and stay active, know their family history, and reduce risk factors. Mitigating risk through diet and exercise remains tantamount.