Researchers at the National Cancer Institute predict that breast cancer will 50 percent by the year 2030, according to new research presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Breast cancers are the most common form of cancer in the United States with 283,000 diagnosed cases in 2011. According to Philip Rosenberg, a senior investigator in the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute, that number is predicted to rise by 50 percent to about 410,000 in 2030, as reported by The Washington Post.
The increase was driven by three factors, as explained by Rosenberg. People are living longer and as women grow older without dying to some other disease, they are more likely to develop a breast cancer. There are also more women who are at an age where they are at higher risk for breast cancer, meaning older women in the population as the Baby Boom generation ages. And the third factor is the rising rate of a type of breast cancer called estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, according to Forbes.
Out of all three factors, only the last one comes as a surprise, but the good news is that estrogen receptor negative breast cancer rates are actually going down.
Some experts also believe it’s time to stop considering “ductile carcinoma in situ”, the presence of abnormal cells in the milk ducts of the breast, as a cancer, because the disease is not invasive and does not threaten women’s lives if left untreated. Just because of the term cancer, some women choose mastectomies when they receive the diagnosis.
[quote text_size=”small” author=”– Otis Brawley” author_title=”Chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society”]
Right now, we have women getting bilateral mastectomies for ductal carcinoma in situ, which is not a cancer. It’s the world turned upside down.
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In an unrelated study published last week in the medical journal Gut, scientists have discovered a new breath test that can detect stomach cancer.
