Breast cancer rising among younger women: new report

The breast cancer death rate continues to decline among US women, a new American Cancer Society report finds, but diagnoses are becoming more common among younger women.ACS researchers say nearly 518,000 breast cancer deaths have been prevented with mortality rates dropping by 44% since 1989.However, breast cancer incidence rose 1% a year overall from 2012 to 2021.Over those nine years, the incidence rate increased 1.4% annually among women younger than 50, 2.5% among Asian American women and 2.7% among Pacific Islander women.“The encouraging news is breast cancer mortality rates continue to decrease thanks to advances in early detection and treatment,” said Angela Giaquinto, lead study author and ACS associate scientist within the surveillance research team.“But future progress may be thwarted by increasing incidence, especially among younger women, and consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, such as delayed diagnosis due to interruptions in screening,” Giaquinto added.The findings were published Tuesday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.It’s unclear why there’s an uptick in younger breast cancer diagnoses.“There are all sorts of ideas we can throw out as to the reasons why, but until it’s studied we won’t know for sure,” Dr.Wendy Wilcox, chief women’s health officer at New York City Health + Hospitals, told NBC News this week.Breast cancer is the most common cancer among US women after skin cancer.Researchers predict more than 310,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer in US women and 2,790 cases in men will be diagnosed this year.About 42,250 women and 530 men are expected to die from the disease this year.

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Elisa Port, chief of breast surgery for the Mount Sinai Health System, previousl...