Racial Disparities in Breast Cancer

Investigators have suggested many explanations of why black women have worse breast cancer outcomes than white women; for example, black women might metabolize anticancer drugs differently, face more obstacles to care, have more-aggressive disease and comorbidities, or be less adherent to therapy recommendations. Now, two groups of researchers further address this issue.

In the first study, investigators assessed outcomes for nearly 20,000 patients (12% were black) who had various types of cancer and participated in 35 phase III trials from 1974 to 2001. All patients received similar therapy. After adjustment for prognostic factors, overall survival was worse for blacks than for other patients with either early-stage premenopausal breast can…