Word: breast
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...Asian women, as well as black women in the U.S. and Africa, are at higher risk of developing a more aggressive form of breast cancer known as estrogen-receptor negative, or ER-negative. That illness strikes an average of 10 years earlier than the other variety and is indifferent to drugs that block estrogen since it isn't fed by estrogen in the first place. Worse, research findings released in June 2006 showed that 40% of premenopausal African-American breast-cancer patients have an even more dangerous form of ER-negative cancer called the basal-like subtype, resistant not only...
...Genes can cause problems of their own - particularly for Asians. Fewer than 10% of American women with breast cancer have a form caused by an inherited mutation in their genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2, which makes them three to seven times as likely to fall ill. BRCA-related breast cancer is more apt to hit before age 50 and to recur in the second breast. In a 2002 study, University of Toronto doctors concluded that because of the relatively early age of Asian breast-cancer patients and because hereditary cancers disproportionately occur in young women, "a high proportion of breast...
...Merely detecting breast malignancies in the Asian population may present special difficulties. Asian women tend to have denser breast tissue than other women, and many studies show dense tissue is up to five times as likely to develop malignancies. What's more, such tissue can conceal the disease since both tumors and healthy tissue may show up white on a mammogram. Asian women even draw the short straw when it comes to treatment. Doses of conventional chemotherapy are determined partly by a patient's height and weight, but mounting evidence suggests that certain ethnic groups absorb the chemicals differently. Researchers...
...Western Ways, Western Woes If the spread of U.S. and European lifestyles is indeed contributing to the breast-cancer boom, the first and worst of all those new habits is almost surely diet. In a study released in July, scientists traced the eating habits of 3,000 Chinese women, ranging in age from 25 to 64. Half of the group ate a "meat sweet" diet of Western cuisine, rich in red meat, shrimp, fish, candy, desserts, bread and milk. The others stuck to more traditional Asian fare of tofu, vegetables, sprouts, beans, fish and soy milk. Postmenopausal women...
...Western reproductive habits are also coming under scrutiny. As more women in newly industrializing nations join the workforce, they are limiting the number of children they are having. Research shows that women who give birth to fewer than two children have a higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who have larger broods. Part of the reason is probably that pregnancy and nursing provide the body with a sort of estrogen holiday, as the menstrual cycle is shut down for at least nine months and often a lot longer...