[Posted Dec. 19, 2007]

New Model Detects
Breast Cancer Risk
In Black Women

By Tashira Walker
NNPA Special Correspondent

     WASHINGTON (NNPA)—African-American women can now know with greater certainty whether they are at risk for invasive breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute says its new CARE Model is a way to predict absolute risk in Black women.
     “The CARE Model will provide better counseling, it allows African-American women to better understand their risks, and make better decisions for treatment. It also shows those who are eligible to participate in studies for breast cancer prevention agencies,” says Dr. Mitchell Gail, lead author of the CARE study and chief of the Biostatistics Branch at NCI.
      CARE (Contraceptive and Reproductive Experience) is especially able to project risks in women ages 50-79. Earlier risk detectors have been primarily for White women.
“Absolute risk,” as described by Dr. Gail, is the certain set of risk factors a woman has for developing breast cancer, including heredity. The CARE Model provides the answer to a woman wanting to know what her chances of developing breast cancer are.
     Because of inaccurate projections of earlier models, African-American women could receive underestimates of their risk, causing them not to receive the appropriate counseling and risk prevention.
      The new model is based on stringent research, according to the NCI.
      In order to create the new model, about 1,600 African-American women with invasive breast cancer and over 1,600 African-American women of similar ages without breast cancer participated in a study to provide substantial information needed in understanding how to project their specific risks. The data collected from this study were: their age at first menstrual, the number of immediate relatives with breast cancer, and the number of previous benign breast biopsy examinations.
      Next, data from over 14,000 African -American women between the ages of 50 -79 with no history of breast cancer was compared to the findings of the CARE study.
The findings resulted in an estimate of the number of women who would be expected to develop invasive breast cancer - 323.
More information about the CARE Model will be available on the National Cancer Institute website in the spring of 2008, www.healthcentral.com.

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