New Insights into Male Breast Cancer

An international consortium of investigators, the Male Breast Cancer Pooling Project, was initiated to develop a more robust dataset on the epidemiology of male breast cancer (MBC), a relatively rare disease compared with female breast cancer. Most male breast cancer studies are small in size, retrospective, and have other limitations. Prior reports have shown many similarities to female breast cancer, including a link between obesity and elevated risk for the disease. Other hormonally influenced conditions, including gynecomastia and Kleinfelter syndrome, have also been linked with MBC, and less well-characterized associations with cirrhosis and diabetes have been observed. In addition, BRCA mutations have long been linked with increased r…