Breast cancer in women under 30 years of age

Abstract

Conflicting opinions exist concerning clinical and pathological presentation, as well as evolution and prognosis, of breast cancer in young women. The roles of associated pregnancy and lactation on these parameters is also unclear. These two conditions are studied in the present work through the comparison of two breast cancer patient age groups: patients under the age of 30 (Group A) and premenopausal patients aged 45-49 (Group B). Rapidly growing and/or inflammatory breast cancer (rapidly progressing breast cancer: RPBC)--a special form of Breast Cancer with a poor prognosis very frequent in the Tunisian breast cancer population--was more often present among Group A patients. This difference is a consequence of the more frequent association of this breast cancer group with pregnancy or lactation; nearly all the cases of breast cancer associated with pregnancy or lactation are RPBC. For breast cancer without the pregnancy/lactation association, the younger group generally shows poorer histological grading and more severe evolution. The number of patients in our study is not really sufficient to allow statistically significant conclusions, but it does seem clear that young age and associated pregnancy/lactation are aggravating factors in Tunisian breast cancer patients.

Breast cancer characteristics at diagnosis and survival among Arab–American women compared to European– and African–American women

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] For example, papers from Tunisia report observations of rapidly progressing breast cancer in young women, suggestive of an inflammatory breast cancer histology. [5][6][7][8] In addition, others have reported that the majority (>50%) of breast cancer cases are diagnosed among women less than 50 [1,3,9] years of age; this is in comparison to US statistics which show that 22% of breast cancer cases are diagnosed in women under 50.…”

Epidemiology of Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC)1

“…The etiology of IBC has been examined in one case-case study of 68 IBC cases in the United States [24] and one case-case study in Pakistan [12]. The etiology of rapidly progressing breast cancer, which encompasses IBC as well as milder forms of the disease, has also been studied in case-comparison studies conducted in Tunisia in the 1970s and 1980s [58,59,67,68,83]. Information on associated factors is also available from case series.…”

“…Tabbane et al also evaluated the roles of pregnancy and lactation in breast cancer among young women in the Salah-Azaiz Institute of Tunis [83]. They compared two age groups for cases diagnosed during the years 1973 to 1980: patients under age 30 years (Group A, n = 48) and cases between ages 45 and 49 (Group B, n = 160).…”

Commentaire

“…Toutefois, vue la fréquence de cette infection dans cette région du monde et vu l'âge de survenue plus jeune semble-t-il de certains cancers du sein localement avancés on ne peut conclure que l'épidémiologie des cancers soit identique entre l'Europe et les pays d'Afrique du Nord [2,7], ceci justifiant à lui seul probablement l'indication d'une étude épidémiologique bien menée d'enregistrement prospectif des cancers du sein associés à une infection à EBV.…”