More Women Living With Metastatic Breast Cancer
An increasing number of women in the United States—an estimated 154,794 as of January 2017—are living with metastatic breast cancer, according to a recent study by Angela B. Mariotto, PhD, of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute (NCI), Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues. With both median and 5-year survival rates increasing over the years, especially in younger women, the investigators indicated the importance of documenting recurrence to foster more research on this understudied population, in their article published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Representing the NCI, the Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the study researchers estimated a twofold increase in 5-year relative survival from 18% in 1992–1994 to 36% in 2005–2012 for women diagnosed with de novo metastatic breast cancer from age 15 to 49. The data are based on Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results registries, and the investigators calculated the prevalence of women who were initially diagnosed with de novo metastatic breast cancer as well as those whose disease progressed to metastatic breast cancer after being diagnosed with earlier-stage disease.
