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Dr. Kim Mulvihill reporting Researchers have uncovered an important evidence that may help explain why breast cancer is often deadlier it certain women.
The findings raise both awareness and hope for new treatments that could save the lives of women who are often faced with the grimmest statistics when they are diagnosed.
Jeanne Lucas has been a state senator in North Carolina for more than a decade - and a breast cancer survivor for the past three years.
Jeanne Lucas, Breast Cancer Survivor: "The message we want to get out to women, and especially African American women, is they don't have to fear it."
And new research may help raise awareness even more.
Charles Perou, Ph.D., Cancer Researcher, University Of North Carolina: "Before we did these studies we knew that African Americans tended to have a worse outcome than when diagnosed with breast cancer but we didn't' know why that was."
Reseachers studied nearly 500 cases of breast cancer and found the basal-like kind is much more likely to strike young American women."
Lisa Carey, M.D.,Cancer Researcher: If you were a young pre-menopausal African American woman who gets breast cancer you are more than twice as likely as an older African American women or white women to get one of subtle types basal like subtypes."
The good news about this finding is that it will help guide research into treatment and prevention of this disease.
Charles Perou, Ph.D., Cancer Researcher, University Of North Carolina: "Now we can recognize this unique type of breast cancer and we're beginning to run the first clinical trials to specifically attack it..
Jeanne Lucas, Breast Cancer Survivor:"Early detection, comprehensive care, they can live on. It's been 2003 since I had my breast cancer, and here I am today, talking strong, sitting up here talking to you, trying to look cute, wearing high heeled shoes!" (laughs)
Chemotherapy is currently the most effective treatment for basal-type breast cancer, regardless of the patient's race.
Researchers are working to develop more targeted treatments.
