Study Traces Breast Cancer Outcome in Older Women

A recently published study of women ages 55 and older with breast cancer found that, on average, the characteristics of the cancer become less aggressive as a woman ages.

The study also showed that the women over 70 years of age with breast cancer that had not spread to the lymph nodes lived, on average, as long as women of the same age in the general U.S. population who do not have breast cancer.

The results of the study appeared in the April 5 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The number of Americans over the age of 55 is increasing and, so too, are the number of breast cancer cases in older women as the risk for breast cancer increases with age. However, according to Dr. Richard Elledge, associate professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co-author of the study, little is known about the cancer's effect on this age group compared to what is known about the disease in younger women. He cites the low representation of elderly women in clinical trials as a reason for the lack of information about the biology and treatment of breast cancer in this population.

The researchers studied more than 300,000 women ages 55 and over with invasive breast cancer. The group was categorized by age, with the oldest being 85 and older. The study looked at approximately 250,000 patients registered with the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program, a national database that reports data to the National Cancer Institute. The remaining 50,000 patients in the study came from a San Antonio breast cancer database, a tumor bank that is now housed at Baylor College of Medicine.

Researchers looked at the average characteristics of breast cancer as a function of age, according to Dr. Elledge, also medical director of the Breast Care Center at Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital. Those characteristics included factors like the speed with which a tumor divides and grows, the size of a tumor, lymph node status, the state of genes p53 and HER2 and the treatment received.

Dr. Elledge says that there could be a number of potential reasons behind the study's findings and no definitive conclusions could be made from the results. He stresses that more research is needed in this age group to determine why the biologic characteristics of breast cancer change with age and what treatment modalities may be most effective.

"Clinical trials now are trying very hard to enroll more elderly women so we can ascertain the best treatments for them and the best management for their care," says Dr. Elledge.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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