Tracking a killer Cancer

Recent findings of why breast cancer is different in Latinas may lead to prevention

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Every October for the last 14 years, I’ve joined my mother, aunts and cousins on a trip to downtown Phoenix for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. After the 5K walk, our annual tradition ends at Matador restaurant in downtown Phoenix, where we join a sea of other pink-wearing walkers for a late breakfast.

We’ll be there again this year, but along with the “In Celebration” signs that we wear in honor of my aunt – a 12-year breast cancer survivor – we’ll add “In Memory” signs to honor my grandmother, who died in January after she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease just 5 weeks earlier.

Our family’s story isn’t noteworthy or unique – every day families lose grandmothers, mothers, aunts, cousins or comadres to breast cancer. In 2007 alone, about 40,000 women lost their battle with the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. 

Supporters like our family join fundraising walks and buy pink ribbon products. But Latinas are being asked to go one step further – to become advocates for needed research on the disease in Latinas and for additional resources for education, screening and treatment for this underserved population.

Recent research suggests breast cancer in Latinas is different from that in non-Hispanic women. But scientists don’t yet understand completely how it is different, why and, finally, what treatments could best fight the disease in Latinas. Consider this:

• Although Latinas are about 40 percent less likely to get breast cancer than White women, they are more likely to die of it.
• Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths for Latinas.
• Hispanic women are about 20 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than White women who are diagnosed at a similar age and stage.

With those alarming statistics and the fact that Latinos are the fastest-growing group in the country, breast cancer in Latinas has been understudied for far too long, says Marìa Elena Martìnez, co-director of cancer prevention and control at the Arizona Cancer Center.

“As this population grows and ages the numbers are just going to continue to grow,” she says. “Hispanic women get less breast cancer than non-Hispanic White women, but the type of disease that they get is worse.

“The issue is what do we do now, before the rate of disease increases so phenomenally with the aging population? How do we make grounds now to understand why this is happening so that our children twenty years from now aren’t sitting here telling the same story?”

For the past three years, Martìnez’s work has been dedicated to studying breast cancer in Latinas. Her goal is simple: “To understand breast cancer in Latinas at the same level that we understand it in White women.”

Recently, she led an analysis of data reported to an Arizona cancer registry to compare breast cancer tumors in Hispanic and non-Hispanic women. A review of nearly 26,000 invasive breast cancer cases found that breast cancer is more likely to hit Hispanic women at a younger age, and they were more likely to have larger tumors, a greater number of positive lymph nodes, high-grade cancers, and to be diagnosed at a more advanced stage. All factors that add up to “more aggressive cancer with a worse chance of survival,” Martìnez explains.

These findings raise what Martìnez calls the “Million Dollar” question: Are Latinas biologically predisposed to more aggressive forms of the disease, or do environmental or cultural issues such as lack of healthcare access play a role? Or is it a combination of factors?

She points to recent studies that suggest biology and genetics matter. Scientists have discovered that Hispanic breast cancer patients have a higher prevalence of the gene mutation BRCA1, which is known to increase the risk of breast cancer. A recent University of Colorado study compared patients in the same insurance plan and found that even with access to equal care, outcomes for Hispanic women are worse than those for White women.