Black women accounted for just under 10 percent of the 208,587 cases of uterine cancer diagnosed in the United States between 2000 and 2017, but they accounted for nearly 18 percent of nearly 16,797 uterine cancer deaths during that period, the study found. Dr. Clark.
The death rate from uterine cancer in black women is 31.4 per 100,000 women aged 40 and over, compared to 15.2 per 100,000 for white women in the same age group, Dr. Clark said. (Comparable mortality rates for Asian American women were nine per 100,000 and for Hispanics 12.3 per 100,000.)
This makes uterine cancer extraordinary, as progress has been made in the last two decades to narrow the racial gap in mortality from most cancers. Another report from the National Cancer Institute, published in JAMA Oncology in May, found that overall cancer mortality declined steadily among black Americans between 1999 and 2019, although it continued to be higher than that of other racial and ethnic groups. groups.
The reasons for the increase in uterine cancer are not well understood. The most common form, endometrioid cancer, is associated with estrogen exposure, which is higher when obesity is present and obesity levels are rising in the United States.
But non-endometrioid cancer has also increased and is not associated with being overweight. Dr. Clark’s study found that black women were more likely to have this aggressive form of uterine cancer. They are less likely to be diagnosed early in the course of the disease, and their survival rates are worse, regardless of when they were diagnosed and what type of cancer they have.
“There are different results at each stage of diagnosis,” said Dr. Karen Knudson, chief executive of the American Cancer Society. “Are they getting access to the same quality of cancer treatment?” She called for more research into the drivers of the trend.
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