Cancer in the News:
http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/04/27/how-does-race-affect-breast-cancer-risk/?iref=allsearch- Hispanic women have a lower rate of breast cancer than non-Hispanic white women,
- "Among the white women, between 62 percent and 75 percent had known risk factors for breast cancer – behaviors or traits that have been found to increase one’s chances of getting the disease, for example, use of hormone replacement therapy."
- In the group of Hispanic women studied, between 7 to 36% had known risk factors that increase the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer.
- In the group of Hispanic women studied, risk factors included getting their period at a young age, not breast-feeding their children, and/or having a low level of physical activity.
- Risk factors that are a problem for Non-Hispanic white women, such as a high level of alcohol consumption and/or a higher body mass were shown to not be a problem for Hispanic women. The fact that they had breast cancer was not related to either of those risk factors.
Reflection:
This article related to what we were talking about in class, which was the fact that some people have different variation in their genetics that allow them to be more resistance to certain diseases or viruses. In descendants of survivors of the black plague, they have a CCR5 mutation that allows them to be more resistant to the HIV virus. In this case, it has been discovered that women of the Hispanic Race have a greater possibility of not getting breast cancer. This article was interesting because I was able to connect it with what we had been recently talking about in class.
