There’s an alarming rise in breast cancer cases among young women, warns the author of a new analysis on the subject, and experts simply don’t understand what’s going on.
The increase is 45% for women in their twenties, 12.5% for women in their thirties and 9% for women in their forties, detailed Dr. Jean Seely, who is the head of the section breast imaging specialist at the Ottawa Hospital and professor at the University of Ottawa.
“In my practice, I see more and more young women with breast cancer,” said Dr. Seely. Previously, we never saw women in their 20s with breast cancer, and today it happens regularly. It’s very scary. »
Dr. Seely and her team analyzed breast cancer cases over a thirty-five year period to detect trends in detection among young women across the country.
These cancers, recalled the specialist, are often diagnosed at more advanced stages, since even front-line doctors will not always have the reflex to recommend their young patient for more in-depth investigations if they detect an anomaly during a routine examination.
There is therefore education to be done on the side of both patients and health specialists, said Dr. Seely.
“Often my patients can’t believe it, and most of the time they tell me: ‘I’m healthy, I exercise, I have no risk factors, why do I care? is coming?”, she said. And in my daily practice, I have to explain to them that it’s not because we think they’ve done anything wrong. We don’t understand what is happening. »
This increase, which is reminiscent of the jump in the number of cases of colorectal cancer in increasingly younger patients, therefore remains unexplained for the moment, even if different hypotheses are mentioned.
In particular, there could be a correlation with lifestyle changes or earlier onset of menstruation, explained Dr. Seely. We also know that there is a correlation with alcohol consumption, particularly among young women.
“But many women do not have any of these risk factors and we are still seeing this increase,” she said. So we can only imagine that there must be some environmental or, you know, nutritional factor that increases the risk. »
This study, added Dr. Seely, should awaken women aged 20, 30 or 40 to the reality that they can have breast cancer, that the disease does not only strike their neighbors or their colleagues, “and we must dispel the myth that it is associated with old age.”
“The incidence remains very low among young women,” she concluded. We don’t want to alarm people. But if a woman notices a change in her breast, she should definitely take care of it. And if her family doctor doesn’t ask for more advanced testing, she should really insist. »
The findings of this study were published in the Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal.