Hypertension Partially Explains Racial Disparity in Breast Cancer Survival
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Mar 12 - High blood pressure accounts for some of the disproportionately higher mortality rates among African American patients with breast cancer compared with Caucasian patients, according to an article in the International Journal of Cancer for March 1.
To examine comorbidities that may be involved in this disparity, Dr. Dejana Braithwaite at the University of California, San Francisco, and co-investigators analyzed data for women with invasive breast cancer treated at Kaiser Permanente in Northern California between 1973 and 1986 and followed through 1999. There were 416 African-American patients and 838 white patients.
During mean follow-up of 8.9 years, overall mortality was 39.7% among the black women and 33.3% among the white women (p = 0.03). Corresponding breast cancer-specific mortality was 28.6% and 21.6% (p <>
After controlling for tumor characteristics, breast cancer treatment, age, and race, hypertension was significantly associated with all-cause mortality (hazard ratio 1.33).
"We found that this single comorbidity alone explained 30.3% of racial disparity in all-cause survival," as well as 20.0% of the racial disparity in breast cancer-specific survival, Dr. Braithwaite s group reports.
"Although preliminary," they conclude, "our results nevertheless suggest that hypertension is an important comorbidity to consider in the context of research on racial disparity in breast cancer and our findings warrant its inclusion in comorbidity measures like the Charlson Comorbidity Index."
Furthermore, "better management of hypertension has potential to improve patient outcomes, particularly among African-American breast cancer patients," Dr. Braithwaite comments in a UCSF statement.
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