Tool to Predict Breast Cancer Is Being Revised

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 (AP) — A widely used tool for predicting a woman’s risk of breast cancer is being updated to better reflect the risks for black women.
At issue is the National Cancer Institute’s online risk calculator, by which information including current age, age when first child was born, and family history of breast cancer is translated into the odds of contracting breast cancer in the next five years.
The original calculator had been slightly underestimating risk for black women age 45 and older and slightly overestimating risk for younger black women, cancer institute researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
The tool was created using studies of breast cancer in white women, and it warned nonwhite women that the answer came with some uncertainty.
Now scientists are updating the calculations to reflect newer data on black women and cancer.
Dr. Mitchell H. Gail and colleagues from the cancer institute re-examined the records of 20,000 black women who were screened for a government study comparing cancer-protective drugs. To qualify, women had to have at least a 1.66 percent risk of breast cancer in the next five years.
Using the old calculator, these women’s average risk was 1.19 percent. Using the new one, their average risk was 1.75 percent. But over all, just 14 percent of these women qualified for the study using the old risk calculator. Had the new one been in use, 30 percent would have qualified.
The online risk calculator — at cancer.gov/bcrisktool — will be updated by spring, Dr. Gail said.