Charmella Roark remembers the shock that paralyzed her when she learned of her younger sister’s cancer diagnosis. In 2018, Kiki Roark wrote in the family message group that she had been diagnosed with stage I breast cancer — the same disease that had taken her aunt’s life just a few years earlier.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Charmella says of her sister’s diagnosis. “She’s my first best friend.” The New Jersey sisters never would have imagined that four years later, Charmella would receive the same diagnosis.
The Roark sisters represent a growing trend in the United States: more and more young women are being diagnosed with cancer. Cancer rates generally declined among men in the U.S. earlier this century before leveling off, but they appear to be rising among women — especially young women.
Cancer diagnoses are shifting from older to younger adults and from men to women, according to a report released Thursday by the American Cancer Society.
Middle-aged women now have a slightly higher risk of cancer than men in the same age group, and young women are almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with the disease as young men, according to the report, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.
It appears that breast and thyroid cancers in women are driving this growing trend. “Breast and thyroid cancer account for nearly half of all cancer diagnoses in women under age 50,” said Rebecca Siegel, lead author of the report and senior scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society.
“We are seeing some changes”
Kiki was 37 years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2018.
A sharp pain in her armpit had radiated to her breast, and she had asked three of her doctors to order a mammogram to check for cancer. But each said a mammogram was unnecessary at their age, according to their account.
“Just because I was younger, I feel like they didn’t take me seriously,” says Kiki. “But I kept insisting, saying, ‘No, something’s not right.’”
It took months, Kiki said, but she finally got a mammogram. The exam showed signs of cancer, and a biopsy confirmed the diagnosis. “I was at an early stage,” recalls Kiki, a mother of three who works from home.
For treatment, she had both breasts removed in a double mastectomy and was given the hormonal medication tamoxifen.
Charmella remained by her sister’s side throughout her illness. And in the years since, Charmella says she was inspired to keep up with her routine breast cancer screenings by getting mammograms.
In the summer of 2022, one of those mammograms revealed that Charmella, a high school teacher and mother of two, had stage I breast cancer. She was 44 years old at the time.
After receiving her own diagnosis, Charmella immediately called Kiki. “I was devastated,” says Kiki. “The first thing I thought: not again.”
Charmella quickly started treatment: six sessions of chemotherapy and a month of radiation.
Charmella and Kiki found themselves among the estimated 1 in 3 women in the US who will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives.
Historically, men have had a higher overall cancer incidence than women, but in 2021, women under 50 in the United States had an 82% higher cancer incidence rate than their male peers, new report finds. from the American Cancer Society, which used data from the National Cancer Institute, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.
“We see for the first time that if you are a woman under 65, you are now more likely to develop cancer than men in the same age group,” said William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society.
“The other thing is that we are seeing a change in the age of cancer diagnosis,” says Dahut. “Age remains the main risk factor for cancer in general, and this has not changed. But we are seeing some changes”, he adds. “The only age group where we are really seeing an increase in cancer risk, increasing incidence, is in those under 50.”
A Plea to “Stand Up for Yourself”
Charmella, now 47, and Kiki, 44, are cancer-free and doing well, but they know that as Black women in the United States, they are part of a community that faces significant disparities in cancer outcomes.
Although black women in the U.S. have a breast cancer incidence rate about 4% lower than white women, they are 41% more likely to die from the disease, according to previous data from the American Cancer Society.
The new report shows that these large disparities persist.
“You are more likely to develop breast cancer as a white woman. You are more likely to die from it as a black woman, particularly when looking at younger populations where the disparity numbers are greater,” says Dahut.
Black people have a death rate twice as high as white people for prostate, stomach and uterine cancers, according to the report. Likewise, death rates for kidney, liver, stomach, and cervical cancers among Native Americans are two to three times higher than those seen in white people.
There are also geographic differences in cancer occurrence and outcomes. Nationwide, rates of people dying from cancer range from fewer than 150 deaths per 100,000 people in Utah, Hawaii and New York to more than 210 per 100,000 in West Virginia, Kentucky and Mississippi.
Overall cancer survival rates are increasing, and the cancer death rate in the United States continues to fall, preventing nearly 4.5 million deaths from 1991 to 2022 — resulting in an overall drop of 34%, according to the new report.
“Year after year, we’ve seen a steady decline in cancer-related mortality, and that’s very important,” says Mariana Chavez-MacGregor, a professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, who was not involved in the new report.
This decline in cancer deaths has been largely due to a reduction in the number of people smoking cigarettes, earlier detection of some cases of cancer, and advances in treatment options, including the development of new immunotherapy drugs and targeted therapies.
The Roark sisters want other women to know that it’s important to advocate for access to these medical advances when it comes to screening and treatment. Screening mammograms are recommended for women every two years starting at age 40, unless the patient meets certain other criteria.
“I always say, stand up for yourself,” says Kiki. “I had a breast specialist, a gynecologist and a family doctor telling me it was nothing,” he recalls. “If I had listened to them, we don’t know where I would be right now.”
The American Cancer Society report projects that this year there will be more than 2 million cancer diagnoses – or about 5,600 new cases per day – and more than 618,000 cancer deaths in the U.S., corresponding to about 1,700 lives lost per day.
What’s behind this trend?
As the incidence of cancer among younger adults continues to rise, doctors are pondering what could be behind the trend. Is it just because we’ve gotten better at screening and detecting cancers, or are there real-world factors putting people at risk?
“In my professional opinion, this phenomenon is multifactorial. We can’t point to one specific factor, but it’s possible that changes in fertility patterns play a role,” says Chavez-MacGregor, referring to how pregnancy and breastfeeding have been linked to a reduced risk of breast cancer later in life. in life.
“Obesity and alcohol consumption are likely contributing factors, as is a possible lack of physical activity,” he adds. “Other unknown variables may also be at play,” such as environmental risk factors.
A better understanding of the factors driving this increase could help inform ways to reduce risk among younger adults, according to Neil Iyengar, a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York who was not involved in the new report.
“There is, and needs to be, a greater shift in scientific research and resources available for the scientific community to better understand how we can be more effective in preventing cancer, or at least reducing the risk of cancer,” says Iyengar.
“We certainly need to understand individual biology and how we can prevent cancer based on individual biology. But we need to expand this to understand a person’s lifestyle, their environmental risks”, he adds. “A younger person’s exposures and risks are likely to be very different from those of an older person traditionally at risk for cancer.”
The increase in cancer incidence among younger age groups could also have major implications for the future of cancer treatment, as some cancers in younger people may require more aggressive therapies, according to Iyengar.
“We need to be prepared to support our younger men and women who are undergoing potentially more aggressive cancer treatments while still juggling young families and professional careers,” he says. “This ranges from practical considerations – how to schedule chemotherapy treatments, for example, in a way that is least disruptive to people’s lives, careers and families – to the types of treatments we are using.”
This content was originally published in Young women have twice the risk of cancer than men, says study on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil

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