A new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) finds that breast cancer deaths have fallen dramatically since 1989, averting more than 517,900 probable deaths.
However, the report also reveals that younger women are increasingly being diagnosed with the disease, a worrying finding that suggests an increase in colorectal and pancreatic cancers.
“The numbers are not dramatically different, but the sharpest increase is really among women under 50,” said between 2012 and 2021. Dr. William Dahutchief scientific officer for ACS.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women after skin cancer, and remains a disease of aging. An estimated 310,720 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in women in 2024, and more than 42,000 women are expected to die from the disease. Although rare, men can also be diagnosed with breast cancer; an estimated 2,790 will be diagnosed and 530 will die.
The majority of diagnoses and deaths occur in people over 50, and more than half of all deaths are expected in women over 70, the report found. The increase in early onset cancers is nevertheless an area of urgent research.
“The reasons for this increase remain unknown,” a group of researchers from Harvard, Washington University and Japan recently wrote in the journal Nature.
“But plausible hypotheses include greater exposure to potential risk factors, such as a Western-style diet, obesity, physical inactivity, and antibiotic use, particularly during the early prenatal to adolescent periods of life.”
Dahut echoed the hypothesis that early-onset cancers may be linked to obesity, saying there is a growing consensus that obesity can lead to cancer faster than other known risk factors, such as smoking.
At the same time, Dahut expressed hope about new GLP-1 weight loss drugs: “If we can find a way to reduce obesity in this country, whether it’s based largely on nutrition, a combination of nutrition and therapeutics, it will lead to less cancer.”
The ACS report also highlighted continued cancer disparities among Americans. Death rates for Native American and Alaskan Native women have barely budged in three decades, even as breast cancer survival rates for Americans overall have improved. Black women also continue to have higher death rates than white counterparts. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for Hispanic women.
Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experienced higher incidence increases over the past decade, rising between 2.5-2.7% per year, as did younger white women, which rose 1.4% per year for those younger than 50 .
ACS releases a breast cancer report every other year before Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October. The report combines data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Those two federal centers for research house the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results program, or Seener program (under NCI), where population-based cancer incidence and mortality data are the focus, and the National Program of Cancer Registries (under CDC), where short-term -incidence trends by race, ethnicity, age, state, and cancer stage and molecular subtype are derived. The organization also has its findings in CA: A Cancer Journal for CliniciansACS’s peer-reviewed journal.
