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Jul 9, 2008 7:09 pm US/Eastern
HealthWatch: Breast Cancer & Younger Women
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
Researchers may have discovered why breast cancer is different depending on your age. The surprising data is thought to be a great advancement in understanding the disease.
The findings, says CBS 2's Dr. Holly Phillips, involve younger women and help explain why the disease tends to be more aggressive for them. The information is invaluable in the battle against breast cancer.
When school administrator Vanessa Silva was diagnosed with breast cancer at just 32-years-old, she underwent a bilateral mastectomy, followed by powerful chemotherapy.
"I did not do well with it. It just felt like I was hit by a truck," said Silva.
Her treatment was aggressive because the disease is more aggressive in younger women than it is in older patients. And now, researchers at Duke University know why after analyzing tumors from both age groups.
"Tumors in young women had specific genetic components that made them more aggressive," said Dr. Kimberly Blackwell at Duke University Medical Center.
Scientists were shocked to find out how common these genetic components were in younger women.
"If breast cancers arising in younger women are all linked together by certain genetic elements it hints that there are probably very specific causes that lead to the development of breast cancer in younger women," said Dr. Blackwell.
Identifying patterns and genes that make breast cancer different in young women may be the first step in developing better treatments for everyone.
New drugs that can better target the tumors would be a welcome weapon.
"We can really use those therapies to treat the cancers and we'll get much better responses than this sort of shot gun therapy that we're using now," said Dr. Alison Estabrook of St. Luke's Roosevelt.
Although Silva's treatment was difficult, it did work.
"I now don't have cancer," she said.
And she hopes future discoveries will make surviving cancer a little easier. The study was wide-reaching. It looked at nearly 800 breast cancer tumors from women in five countries on three continents. So the results apply to women from a variety of backgrounds. The National Cancer Institute funded the research.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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