Breast cancer rises among Asian American and Pacific Islander women, and experts aren't sure why

 Christina Kashiwada was traveling for work during the summer of 2018 when she noticed a small, itchy lump in her left  bone.

He allowed  little of it at first. He performed routine  tone- examinations and kept up with medical  movables . But a relative  prompted her to get a mammogram. She sought comforting and learned she had stage 3  bone cancer, a disclosure that stunned her.

" I am 36, right?" said Kashiwada, a civil  mastermind in Sacramento, California." No bone  is allowing about cancer."

In 2021, approximately 11,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander women will be diagnosed with breast cancer and approximately 1,500 will die. The latest federal data show that the rate of new breast cancer diagnoses among Asian American and Pacific Islander women — a group with relatively low rates of diagnosis — is higher than that of many other racial and ethnic groups. The competition is growing very fast. The trend is particularly sharp among young women like Kashiwada.

In 2021, 55 of every 100,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander women under age 50 will be diagnosed with breast cancer, which is higher than the rate for black and Hispanic women and similar to the rate for white women. According to data from national agencies by age. Health. (Hispanics can be of any race or combination of races but are grouped separately in this data.)

From 2000 to 2021, the rate of new breast cancer cases among Asian American and Pacific Islander women increased by nearly 52 percent from 2000 to 2021. Over the period, the rate for women of all ages, races and ethnicities increased by 3%.

Researchers have picked up on this trend and are racing to figure out why it's happening in an ethnically diverse group. He suspects the answer is complex, ranging from cultural changes to stressful lifestyles — yet he acknowledges that cultural differences make it a mystery and difficult for patients and their families to communicate.

Helen Chew, director of the clinical breast cancer program at UC Davis Health, said the Asian American diaspora is so vast and diverse that simple explanations for the rise in breast cancer are unclear.

"It's a real trend," Chew added, adding that "it's hard to tease out exactly why it is. Are we seeing an influx of people who have less access to care? Is it culturally But is it because of many things? Where they see something on their breasts, they don't want to come in?"

There is an urgent need to solve this mystery as it is costing lives. Although women in most racial and ethnic groups are experiencing rapid declines in breast cancer death rates, approximately 12 out of every 100,000 Asian American and Pacific Islander women will die from breast cancer in 2023. Essentially the same death rate as in 2000. Age-adjusted, provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. During this period, the death rate from breast cancer among all women fell by 30%.

Breast Cancer Death Rates Dropping, but Not for AAPI Women

Over the past two decades, the age-adjusted death rate from breast cancer has remained relatively flat among Asian American and Pacific Islander women, even as it has fallen among all women. Although AAPI women are less likely to die from breast cancer than other women, the gap has narrowed.

The CDC does not break down breast cancer death rates for many different groups of Asian-American women, such as women of Chinese or Korean descent. However, she has begun to distinguish between Asian American women and Pacific Islander women.

About 9,000 Asian American women died from breast cancer from 2018 to 2023, compared with about 500 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Rim women. However, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women had a 116 percent higher death rate from breast cancer than Asian American women during this period.

NIH data show that rates of pancreatic, thyroid, colon, and endometrial cancers, along with rates of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, have recently increased among Asian American and Pacific Islander women younger than 50. has increased. Yet breast cancer is far more common among young AAPI women than any of these other types of cancer — particularly because young women are more likely to experience more aggressive forms of the disease, including Mortality rate is high.

"We're seeing somewhere around a 4 percent annual increase," said Scarlett Gomez, an epidemiologist and professor at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California-San Francisco. "We're seeing more than 4% annual growth in Asian/Pacific Islander women under the age of 50."

Gomez is the lead investigator in a large study exploring the causes of cancer in Asian Americans. "There is not enough research yet to know what is causing the recent increase in breast cancer," he said. The answer may involve multiple risk factors over a long period of time.

"One of the hypotheses we're exploring is the role of stress," he said. "We're asking all kinds of questions about different sources of stress, different coping styles, throughout life."

Moon Chan, a University of California-Davis professor and expert on cancer health disparities, added that only a small portion of NIH funding is devoted to cancer research among Asian Americans.

Kashiwada underwent a mastectomy after her breast cancer diagnosis. During surgery, doctors at UC Davis Health discovered that the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes in her underarm. He underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy and 20 sessions of radiation treatment.

Throughout her treatment, Kashiwada kept her ordeal a secret from her grandmother, who helped raise her. Her grandmother never knew about the diagnosis. "I didn't want him to worry about me or put pressure on him," Kashiwada said. "She probably would never sleep if she knew this was happening. It was very important for me to protect her."

Kashiwada moved in with her parents. His mother took time off work to help care for him.

Kashiwada's two young children, then ages 3 and 6, stayed with their father so they could focus on their recovery.

"The kids would come after school," she said. "My dad would pick them up and bring them to see me almost every day while their dad was at work."

Kashiwada spent months regaining strength after radiation treatment. She returned to work but with doctor's instructions to avoid heavy lifting.

Kashiwada had his last reconstructive surgery a few weeks before the start of the 2020 COVID lockdown. But his treatment was not over.

Her doctors had told her that the estrogen had eaten away at her cancer, so they put her on medication for early menopause. The treatment was not as effective as they had hoped. Her doctor performed surgery to remove her uterus in 2021.

Most recently, she was diagnosed with osteopenia and will undergo injections to prevent bone loss.

Kashiwada said she has overcome a lot of negative feelings about her disease and wants other young women, including Asian American women like her, to be aware of their heightened risk.

"It doesn't matter how healthy you think you are, or whether you're exercising, or whatever you're doing, eating well, which is all the things I do. was - I would say it doesn't make you invulnerable or immune," she said. . "Not to say you should be afraid of everything, but just be in tune with your body and what your body is telling you."