Breast cancer and its occurence
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What is breast cancer?
A
cancerous tumour arises when control is lost of cell division and cells continue to multiply unnecessarily.
Breast cancer is not a single disease. Ductal carcinoma (cancer in the milk ducts) accounts for over 70% of breast cancers, followed by carcinoma of the breast lobules at about 10% -15%. The rest are rare forms of
cancer, for example of the connective tissues. Both ductal and lobular carcinomas can be localized, and, if untreated may or may not progress to invasive cancer (extending beyond the duct or lobule into surrounding tissue).
Incidence in the UK
Each year in the UK around 41,000 new cases of
breast cancer were diagnosed, and about 13,000 patients die of
breast cancer. Breast cancer is the commonest single cause of death among women aged 35-54 years. Each year 1 or 2 women in every thousand will be newly diagnosed with breast cancer. 75% of these will be post-menopausal women. 1 in 9 women in the UK will develop the disease.
Incidence worldwide
There are striking differences in the incidence of
breast cancer throughout the world. Breast cancer accounts for 24.3 deaths per one hundred thousand in England and Wales, but only 18.9 in Italy, and 8.3 in Japan. There are many possible reasons for these differences, for example climate, diet, genetic inheritance, environmental toxins, patterns of birth control or breast feeding and age at first
pregnancy. Women moving from low incidence to high incidence countries seem to acquire the higher risk of their new country. This could suggest that environmental factors, such as diet and lifestyle, play a large role.
