breast cancer risk for Asian immigrants - (Sep/27/2006 )
Does anyone know if Asian immigrants have the greatest breast cancer risk? I my supervisor told me this and I want to find a reference to read up about it.
If anyone have any suggestions that will be great!
Thanks!
Floz
asian immigrants to america and other western nations?
i'll try dig up the papers for you. in the mean time, try pub med and look up: "breast cancer" immigrants survival risk (and variantions of those search terms)... lots of papers there
people who live in asia (ie japan where the risk of being diagnosed is 1 in 80 compared to say australia where the risk is 1 in 11) have an overall reduced risk of developing breat cancer. there's a huge amount of papers on pubmed which implicate diet in this very significant risk reduction. miso, soy, leafy green vegs, fiber, etc etc etc. however, it is well known, and documented, that when a person moves to a new country, their sik of dying from a particular cancer will rise or fall to match that of the people natice to that land.
there was a paper in 1995 which indicated that the breast cancer death rates of women who moved to australia or canada as adults were indistinguishable from that of local residents. for women who migrated from a country where the breast tumour rate was lower than in her new home, the risk of cancer rose; but for those coming from nations where the breast cancer is even more prevalent, the risk dropped.
i seem to recall, this is also true of other cancer (colon and throat cancer, in particular stand out).
check out pub med...
J Natl Cancer Inst. 1995 Aug 2;87(15):1154-61. Links
Breast cancer mortality among immigrants in Australia and Canada.Kliewer EV, Smith KR.
Chuang SC, Chen W, Hashibe M, Li G, Zhang ZF. Related Articles, Links
Survival rates of invasive breast cancer among ethnic Chinese women born in East Asia and the United States.
Asian Pac J Cancer Prev. 2006 Apr-Jun;7(2):221-6.
Polek C, Klemm P, Hardie T, Wheeler E, Birney M, Lynch K. Related Articles, Links
Asian/Pacific Islander American women: age and death rates during hospitalization for breast cancer.
Oncol Nurs Forum. 2004 Jul 13;31(4):E69-74. Print 2004 Jul.
Yu MY, Hong OS, Seetoo AD. Related Articles, Links
Uncovering factors contributing to under-utilization of breast cancer screening by Chinese and Korean women living in the United States.
Ethn Dis. 2003 Spring;13(2):213-9.
Pineda MD, White E, Kristal AR, Taylor V. Related Articles, Links
Asian breast cancer survival in the US: a comparison between Asian immigrants, US-born Asian Americans and Caucasians.
Int J Epidemiol. 2001 Oct;30(5):976-82.
so, if your supervisor is saying the being an asian immigrant increases your risk of breast cancer... what she actually means is "being an asian immigrant in a western country will change the risk of breast cancer to that of the native (western) population. this is essentially increasing the individuals risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer comapred to their risk if they had remained in the asian country".
V
your supervisor could also be saying that "asian immigrants are more at risk of developing breast cancer than the native population".... which is not essentially true of the latest immigrants, but the older generation does have this issue. there are papers which link this phenomena to education about breast cancer, reluctance to talk to a doctor about it .... (check out pubmed again
i seem to be contradicting the first post... but that was based on new immigrants. this is not an easy question to answer if you split up the demographics.
For asian-americans who immigrated to the US at least a decade ago, the risk of breast cancer is 80 percent higher than that of new immigrants. For those born in the US, the breast cancer risk is similar to that of caucasian women. (check out the susan komen foundation site for more information on this).
http://ethnomed.org/clin_topics/asian_br_cancer.html
is a nice overview of asian immigrants in the US.
Chen WT, Bakken S.
Breast cancer knowledge assessment in female Chinese immigrants in New York.
Cancer Nurs. 2004 Sep-Oct;27(5):407-12.
Wong-Kim E, Sun A, DeMattos MC. Related Articles, Links
Assessing cancer beliefs in a Chinese immigrant community.
Cancer Control. 2003 Sep-Oct;10(5 Suppl):22-8.
Miller AM, Champion VL. Related Articles, Links
Attitudes about breast cancer and mammography: racial, income, and educational differences.
Women Health. 1997;26(1):41-63.
PMID: 9311099 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
V