The Pill may increase Breast Cancer risk in African American Women

One out of every eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. This disease is one of the leading causes of cancer related deaths in women, second only to lung cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute an estimated 39,840 women will die of breast cancer this year alone--a disproportionate number of the women who die will be African-American.

According to the Office of Minority Health in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “African American females experience higher death rates from breast cancer than any other racial or ethnic group, even though Whites experience higher incidence rates.” Studies show that between the ages of 20 and 50 black women are twice as likely to die of breast cancer than white women with the disease.

Researchers say 20 - 30 percent of the breast cancers found in African American women are triple-negative. That is, these cancers lack estrogen and progesterone hormone receptors, making them resistant to drugs that block tumor growth. Estrogen receptor (ER) positive cancers typically have a better treatment outcome than ER negative tumors. Dr. Vanessa Sheppard, a behavioral scientist at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University, says this type of cancer is very aggressive, and often difficult to treat.

This week, researchers at Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University School of Medicine ( BUSM) reported that African American women who use oral contraceptives have a greater likelihood of developing breast cancer than nonusers. In a 12 year study that followed 59,000 African American women, researchers found that women the incidence of estrogen receptor negative cancer was 65 percent greater among women who took the Pill. The study, which was published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, reported that that the greatest risk was found among women who had taken the pill within the past five years and whose use lasted for ten years or longer.

Dr. Lynn Rosenberg is the associate director of the Slone Epidemiology Center and professor of epidemiology at BUSM. She says that oral contraceptive formulations changed over time, and it’s important to study how recent formulations affect breast cancer risk. She notes however, that "a mechanism to explain an adverse influence of oral contraceptives on development of estrogen receptor negative breast cancer is currently unknown.”

What does this research mean for African American women on the Pill? Should doctors urge the members of  this high-risk population to consider alternative forms of contraception?

Photo credit: nate one