The study shows that mortality rates for breast cancer during the 1980s and 1990s have been increasing for both black and white women 80 years and older. But the breast cancer mortality trends for black women aged 40-79 increased in the 1980s and then leveled off after 1988. For white women aged 40-79, breast cancer mortality rates increased in the 1980s, although not to the same extent as for black women, and then declined after 1989. NCI researchers say the differences may be socioeconomic rather than physical.
Recent studies conclude that black women respond to treatment at about the same rate as whites do.
Also, once diagnosed with breast cancer, the tumors in black women do not seem to follow a more aggressive pattern. Likewise, there is no evidence that black women with the same extent of disease receive lesser treatment, but tumors in black women are usually discovered at a later stage than are those in white women. Kenneth C. Chu, PhD, one of the NCI researchers, says that the problem may be, at least in part, related to access to health care. Chu works in the Office of Special Populations Research. According to the CDC, an estimated 2 million American women will be diagnosed with breast or cervical cancer in this decade, and half a million women will lose their lives to these diseases.