Both its causes and the means for its cure remain undiscovered. Over 2 million breast cancer survivors are alive in America. Men can develop breast cancer too, although its incidence is low. In the United States, one out of nine women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, a risk that was one out of 14 in 1960. This year, a breast cancer case will be newly diagnosed every three minutes, and a woman will die from breast cancer every 13 minutes.
Every woman is at risk for breast cancer.
The risk of developing breast cancer increases as a woman ages, if she has a family history of breast cancer, has never had children or had her first child after age 30, and if she has had prior treatment with radiation therapy for Hodgkin's disease. However, over 70 percent of cases occur in women who have no identifiable risk factors. Breast cancer cannot yet be prevented. However, there is now a risk reduction option available for woman at very high risk, such as the estimated five to 10 percent of American women with multiple close blood relatives who have had the disease. In 1998, the drug tamoxifen was shown to reduce breast cancer cases by 50 percent over four years in a large research study of high-risk women.