The Cayman Islands will be part of a study to investigate why Caribbean women appear to have higher rates of inherited breast cancer and more aggressive forms of cancer than women in the United States and other countries.
An initial study in the Bahamas showed 48.5 per cent of women with breast cancer developed it before the age of 50 and 19.5 per cent before the age of 40.
According to Dr. Theodore Turnquest, a visiting oncologist at the Chrissie Tomlinson Hospital who presented the findings of the Bahamas study at a cancer health fair hosted by the Cayman Islands Cancer Society on Saturday, the study is being expanded to include the Cayman Islands, Barbados, Dominica and Trinidad and Tobago.
The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation recently granted $600,000 in funds for University of Miami researcher Judith Hurley, who also did the Bahamas report, to study the genetic characteristics of breast cancer of women in Caribbean.
The research aims to study 1,000 breast cancer patients from the four Caribbean countries by searching for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, which are found in 23 per cent of women with breast cancer in the Bahamas – the highest reported rate in the world – compared with three to five per cent in the US.
Mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer.
Dr. Turnquest, who practises in the Bahamas, said he was seeing patients in their 30s and 40s with late stage aggressive cancers, but said he did not believe the Bahamas was alone in seeing this type of early onset cancer. “We are just the only ones to have sat down and figured it out,” he said.
“Almost half of our patients show up with late stage, stage 2, 3 or 4 disease. We were not dealing with run of the mill softball stuff, we were dealing with big time, heavy duty stuff,” he said.
According to the study, he said, in 2007, 43 per cent of women in the Bahamas who died of breast cancer were under the age of 50; 14.3 per cent of them died between the ages of 31 and 40; and 1.1 per cent died in their 20s.
Women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 can be tested by taking a simple mouth swab to determine if they have the genetic mutation that will make them more susceptible to the disease.
Milena Conolly, the cancer registrar at the Health Services Authority, said the date for when the study begins in the Cayman Islands is not yet set, but she hoped women would consider coming forward to take part in the research once the details are finalised.
The Cancer Register was set up last year to build a database to track the prevalence of all types of cancers in the Cayman Islands. Ms Conolly urged all people who have cancer, have survived cancer or have had members of their family develop the disease to contact her and register the case.
“All the information is confidential,” she said. “I’m the only one with access to the information. No names or personal details are ever going to be released,” she said.
Anyone wishing to give their cancer-related information to the registry can contact the Cancer Society on 949-7618 or email [email protected] or call the Cancer Registry on 244-2560 or email [email protected]. They can also ask their doctors to pass on their information.
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