Cancer Health

For instance, for postmenopausal women in the study, “recent hormone
use and younger age at menarche did not appear to play as big a role in
Hispanics,” said Dr. Lisa M. Hines, an assistant professor of biology at
the University of Colorado and lead author of the study, published online
April 26 in Cancer.

For younger women studied, family history and taller height — found in
general to slightly increase breast cancer risk, Hines said — did not
appear to be as strongly linked with breast cancer among Hispanics as
among whites, the study found.

Researchers have long known that breast cancer rates, as well as death
rates from the disease, vary by ethnic group. For instance, according to a
national database, Hispanic women are less likely to get breast cancer
than are white women, with 89 of every 100,000 Hispanic women getting a
breast cancer diagnosis, compared with 132 of every 100,000 non-Hispanic
white women.

However, Hispanic women are more likely to die from the disease, the
statistics show.

“That’s been known for a long time,” Hines said. “The question is
why.”

About 15 percent of the U.S. population is Hispanic, and their numbers
are growing, Hines noted, but few studies have looked at breast cancer
risk in the Hispanic population to see if the accepted risks for breast
cancer — identified from analyses that included predominately white
populations — hold for Hispanic women.

For the new study, Hines and her colleagues analyzed information on
white and Hispanic women enrolled in the 4-Corners Breast Cancer Study, so
named because participants lived in New Mexico, Utah, Arizona and
Colorado, four states whose boundaries touch at one point.

They evaluated data on 4,809 women — 3,134 postmenopausal and 1,675
premenopausal. Women with breast cancer had been diagnosed from 1999 to
2002. All participants had been asked about accepted factors known to
affect breast cancer risk, including their reproductive history, activity
level, height, hormone use, alcohol intake and family history.

The links for some risk factors were either weaker or not found at all
in postmenopausal Hispanic women, who did not seem to be affected by
recent hormone therapy use or by having started their menstrual periods at
a younger age, the study found.

Among younger Hispanic women, taller height and family history were not
found to be linked with increased risk, as they were among white
women.

The established risk factors accounted for up to 75 percent of the
breast cancers in premenopausal white women, but just 36 percent of the
cancers in premenopausal Hispanic women, the study found. For older women,
the established risk factors accounted for 62 percent of the cancers in
white women and just 7 percent of those in Hispanic women.

Exactly why different risk factors have a different impact is not
known, Hines said.

The results also beg the question: Are there other unknown risk factor
that elevate Hispanics’ breast cancer risk? More study is needed in both
areas, she said.

Jane Delgado, president and chief executive of the National Alliance
for Hispanic Health in Washington, D.C., said the research was welcome and
timely.

“As one in every six women is Hispanic, it is good to do a study like
this,” Delgado said. “The issue is that we know that cancer is not one
disease but many diseases, and how it presents itself is going to show
great variability by individuals.”

For now, Hines said, Hispanic women should still follow the same
cancer-prevention advice as others. That means getting regular exercise,
eating a healthy diet and, for older women, scheduling mammograms
regularly.

More information

To learn more about Hispanic
health issues, visit the National Alliance for Hispanic Health.

Leave a Response