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Women under age of 35 more vulnerable to breast cancer spreading: Study

WION Web Team
London, United KingdomUpdated: Nov 03, 2021, 04:41 PM IST
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Photograph:(Reuters)

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As per the analysis, people who have been diagnosed with primary breast cancer before the age of 35 have a higher chance of developing secondary breast cancer. In the UK, alone, nearly a thousand people lose their life to incurable secondary breast cancer in a month

If you are a woman under the age of 35, you might want to consult your doctors and make sure you get your medical check-ups on time because a study has warned that women in this age are more vulnerable to spreading of breast cancer.

According to a group of scientists, women diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 35 have a higher risk of the disease spreading.

Experts carried out a meta analysis of more than 400 studies and found that the risk of breast cancer spreading to other body parts range from six per cent to 22 per cent.

Presented at the sixth International Consensus Conference for Advanced Breast Cancer, the findings of the study suggest that women under the age of 35 and those already suffering from the deadly disease are more at risk. This study has helped scientists figure out who is most at risk.

Experts studied data of tens of thousands of women from North and South America, South Africa, Asia and Oceania. The analysis was conducted after combining more than 400 studies.

In the UK, alone, nearly a thousand people lose their life to incurable secondary breast cancer in a month. "We desperately need to learn more about this devastating disease so that we can find new ways to improve treatment, care and support for people living with it, and for those living in fear of a diagnosis," Kotryna Temcinaite, senior research communications manager at the charity Breast Cancer Now said.

As per the analysis, people who have been diagnosed with primary breast cancer before the age of 35 have a higher chance of developing secondary breast cancer. It is also possible that women can develop secondary breast cancer years after their initial diagnosis.

It has also been observed that the size of the tumour, type of breast cancer and the length of time since the primary diagnosis can also have major impact on the scale of risk.

"This may be because younger women have a more aggressive form of breast cancer or because they are being diagnosed at a later stage," said the presenter of the study, Dr Eileen Morgan, of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

"Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in the world," she said. "Most women are diagnosed when their cancer is confined to the breast or has only spread to nearby tissue. But in some women, the cancer will grow and spread to other parts of the body or come back in a different part of the body several years after the end of their initial treatment.

"At this point the cancer becomes much harder to treat and the risk of dying is higher. However, we don't really know how many people develop metastatic breast cancer because cancer registries have not been routinely collecting this data."