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Alarming breast cancer findings in women of Bahamas
– Reported, February 11, 2012
Dr. Steven Narod, a professor of genetic and cancer research at Toronto University, said the percentage of the Bahamian female population who are found to have an abnormal gene that predisposes them to cancer is the highest he has seen in his 22 years of research around the world. “It was pretty striking,” said Narod, who is visiting The Bahamas to continue participating in the ongoing study.
“I would say it was shocking. Even the guys in the lab thought there was something funny going on. They didn’t think these were average patients. They [asked] me ‘who are these people?’ They thought [the cancer patients] were selected because they have a strong family history [of cancer] or something. I said no, these are just the average women.”
Narod said the results were so startling that he double-checked them. “We didn’t make a mistake in the lab,” he assured.
The preliminary results of the special medical study recently revealed that 17 to 20 percent of 148 Bahamian breast cancer survivors tested, have the abnormal gene.
Narod said after further testing the rate could become as high as 25 percent. Researchers hope to test an additional 50 women.
Local oncologists in conjunction with foreign experts initiated the research after they began noticing that Bahamian women develop aggressive breast cancer at much younger ages than their American counterparts.
Narod said the average rate in other countries is about five percent. “Even though the data is not finished yet, it does seem like the frequency is higher here than everywhere else in the world,” he said. “Now not every country has been studied but usually we see about three or four percent of women with breast cancer have a [gene] mutation, and studies where we look at it, where it’s considered high, it’s about five or six percent. I’ve been doing studies all over the world and this is by far the highest.”
Narod said he has conducted research in Cuba, Colombia, Costa Rica, Israel, Venezuela, Vietnam, Canada and several other countries. He added that that the highest rate of genetic mutation he had previously seen was in young Jewish women, which was 10 percent.
“Here, it’s about 20 percent. The story is evolving but that part of it is not going to go away,” said Narod, referring to the figure.
He explained that the mutated genes are contributing to about a fifth of breast cancer cases and probably about half of the cases of ovarian cancer.
Narod said researchers are still trying to find out why that is. He guessed that because the population is so small, more people are likely to develop the bad gene.
“In genetics, when the population gets real small, the evolution is different,” Narod explained. “Once genetic evolution happens, then it could become fixed. I’ve never seem that but this actually seems to be the case.”
Narod is among a group of international and local oncologists conducting breast cancer research on Bahamian women. When the final results are in, they hope to be able to find a way to prevent Bahamians who are found to have the abnormal gene from developing cancer.
“We want to tailor cancer treatment specifically for Bahamian women,” said Bahamian oncologist Dr. Duvaughn Curling. “We hope to have better screening processes and cancer prevention. The benefit and the payoff is going to be amazing. We’re going to make a huge impact. We will save lives.”
The Bahamas uses American Cancer Society guidelines for screening, which calls for starting mammograms when women are age 40. Researchers believe their findings may point to the need for screening at earlier ages.
Curling said over the past six years, the Princess Margaret Hospital has been seeing about 80 to 100 new cancer patients each year. He said a large percentage of Bahamian women who develop cancer are young. According to health statistics, 34 percent of Bahamian women diagnosed with breast cancer are 44 or younger. This compares to 12 percent of American women under 44.
What researchers also find startling is that 44.6 percent of those Bahamian women diagnosed have late-stage breast cancer compared to 12 percent of American women.
The average age of women with breast cancer in The Bahamas is 42 while the average age in the United States is 62.
Further testing will be conducted today and Friday at the Cancer Society Building between 9:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. The medical research team consists of Dr. Judith Hurley from the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Centre in Miami, as well as Bahamian oncologists, Dr. Theodore Turnquest, Dr. Curling and Dr. John Lunn.
Dr. Narod and Dr. Talia Tonneberg, a genetic counselor, are assisting the team.
Credits: By KRYSTEL ROLLE ~ Guardian Staff Reporter
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