Fear, anxiety, and isolation could all play a role in the etiology of breast cancer aggressiveness, especially for minority patients, according to study results presented at the 4th American Association for Cancer Research Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities.
According to Garth H. Rauscher, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology in the division of epidemiology and biostatistics at the School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, “We found that after diagnosis, black and Hispanic breast cancer patients reported higher levels of stress than whites, and that stress was associated with tumor aggressiveness.”
Rauscher and colleagues studied patients’ stress levels approximately 2 to 3 months after diagnosis. The study included patient-reported perceptions of psychosocial stress (fear, anxiety, isolation) and its relationship to breast cancer aggressiveness.
Of the 989 breast cancer patients who were recently diagnosed and participated in the study,
Outcomes revealed higher psychosocial stress scores for both black and Hispanic patients compared to white patients.
“It’s not clear what’s driving this association. It may be that the level of stress in these patients’ lives influenced tumor aggressiveness. It may be that being diagnosed with a more aggressive tumor, with a more worrisome diagnosis and more stressful treatments, influenced reports of stress. It may be that both of these are playing a role in the association,” Rauscher said.
Source: AACR.
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