Breast Cancer News & Features

It's an extremely rare form of cancer in men, and male breast cancer accounts for just 1% of all breast cancer cases, said Dr. Siddhartha Yadav, a hematology-oncology fellow with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

New Cases Up, But Breast Cancer Deaths Fall Again By Amy Norton HealthDay Reporter WEDNESDAY, Oct. 2, 2019 (HealthDay News) -- Deaths from breast cancer are still declining in the United States, even as more women are being diagnosed with the disease, a new report shows.Researchers from the American Cancer Society found that the national decline in breast cancer deaths, which began about 30 years ago, is still evident. Between 1989 and 2017, the overall death rate dropped 40%.The pace of that decline, however, has slowed down in recent years.Meanwhile, the rate of new breast cancer

A new study argues there's potential benefit in regular mammograms for men who are at high risk of breast cancer.

New recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) may help clarify who can benefit most from a risk assessment test. Now, if a woman has a high risk, the task force is recommending that she see a genetic counselor and possibly be tested for the BRCA mutations.

The test is individualized using DNA from a piece of the tumor taken when the breast cancer is first diagnosed.

What the study team couldn't determine was exactly why your sleep type -- early bird or night owl -- could affect your risk of breast cancer.

MRI screening did findmore tumors, but it also more than doubled the number of biopsies women needed -- many of which turned out to be benign, the researchers said.

The drug, called Kisqali (ribociclib), is already approved for treating such patients -- based on earlier results showing it can delay the progression of their cancer.

Researchers found that eating low-fat foods reduced a woman's risk of dying from breast cancer by 21%.

Researchers found that trans women on hormone therapy had a higher breast cancer risk than the general male population but lower than the general female population.

Studies so far have suggested that computers can outperform humans when it comes to diagnosing certain tumors.

The new guidelines recommend that all women have a formal risk assessment by age 25. Women with an increased risk of breast cancer should be screened based on their specific risk factors. Women with average risk should begin annual screening at age 40.

Women whose cancers are fueled by hormones such as estrogen and progesterone might think they can choose radiation or surgery, but a combination gives the best results, one expert noted

Compared with yearly screening, biannual mammograms do not significantly boost the average woman's risk of death from breast cancer. And they greatly reduce the potential harms, the American Council of Physicians said.

Surgery was associated with a 44% increased chance of survival, assuming that most patients were also treated with chemo or targeted drug therapies, the study found.

Not only is dense breast tissue a risk factor for breast cancer, but mammograms can be difficult to interpret because dense tissue can obscure signs of breast cancer.

If doctors could better predict which patients had a high recurrence risk, those women might want to continue hormone therapy past the standard five years.

The combination of immunotherapy (Tecentriq) and chemotherapy (Abraxane) received accelerated approval for triple-negative breast cancer that is locally advanced or has spread, cannot be surgically removed, and has cells that have a protein called PD-L1, CNN reported.

Even when women have health insurance, high deductibles may delay them from having breast cancer diagnosed and treated, researchers say.

Thermography devices -- also called digital infrared imaging devices -- are approved by the FDA only for use with another screening or diagnostic test like mammography, not as a stand-alone diagnostic tool.

In the clinical trial of the new drug, sacituzumab govitecan, about a third of the patients responded to treatment and the effect lasted up to eight months. The research was funded by the drug's maker.

If harmful DDT exposures occur at times when breast tissue is rapidly changing, such as during puberty, they impact breast development in ways that can later result in cancer, the study author said.

The new study estimates that regular screening plus improved treatments cut the expected rate of breast cancer death in 2018 by between 45 to 58 percent.

The number of women with breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lyphoma (BIA-ALCL) now stands at 457, compared with 414 in the last report, the FDA says.

When women control the pressure on their own breasts during a mammogram, they can tolerate more compression, a new study shows.