ATLANTA — It’s one of the deadliest forms of breast cancer and it’s affecting one group of women more than others.
Karen Neely said she is used to taking charge. She’s a high-powered employment attorney at a law firm in Atlanta. But just over a year ago, her health took center stage.
“I felt a lump and I didn’t know what I was feeling for before, but when you feel it, you know it,” Neely said. “So when I felt the lump, I knew something was wrong.”
Neely was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 34.
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“When I was diagnosed, it was almost a stage of disbelief,” Neely said. “It was a surreal moment, it’s something no one ever thinks they’re going to hear.”
It hit her even harder when she was told she had triple-negative breast cancer — a type of breast cancer that is aggressive, difficult to treat, has a high rate of recurrence and a low rate of survival.
“I just had to take a moment to understand that now I’ve got to fight,” Neely said.
Dr. Ruth O’Regan is aiding in the fight. She treats patients like Neely at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute.
“The triple negatives, the hallmarks of those cancers is that they don’t have estrogen receptors,” O’Regan said. “They don’t have progesterone receptors and they don’t have HER2.”
What that means for patients is that new, targeted therapies don’t work. The treatment is limited to chemotherapy — a treatment that oftentimes is not enough.
“The cells are multiplying rapidly and what that results in is a relatively poor prognosis for these types of cancers,” O’Regan said. “They recur early within the first two years and they recur very often within the first two years. Many of these patients unfortunately die from their disease once their disease recurs.”
Research shows triple-negative cancer affects one population more than any other. Premenopausal African-American women are two to three times as likely to be diagnosed than premenopausal white women.
Mary Jo Lund is a leading researcher on triple-negative breast cancer. She says more research is needed to understand the increased risk.
“That means that nearly 50 percent of young African American women are diagnosed with a type of breast cancer that currently has no effective treatment and we need to understand why,” Lund said. “We can no longer talk about risk factors for breast cancer. We need to talk about risk factors for specific breast cancer subtypes. If we understand what’s associated with these, then we can intervene.”
That is what Neely said she is hoping for so that she and other women will outlive their cancer.
“Now I’m cancer free, and I’m fighting,” Neely said. “I’m fighting.”
There is some hope for triple-negative breast cancer patients. If a patient lives five years past diagnosis, the chance of recurrence is very low.
