For aggressive endometrial cancer subtypes, Non-Hispanic black women had mortality rates more than 1.5-fold higher than those of non-Hispanic white women diagnosed with the same subtype of endometrial cancer and at the same stage of disease, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Dr. Michele Cote
Using cancer incidence and mortality data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, End Results (SEER) database, Dr. Michele Cote of Wayne State University, Detroit, and her colleagues examined patient records from 120,513 endometrial cancer cases diagnosed from 2000 to 2011 in the United States. Compared with non-Hispanic white women, non-Hispanic black women had poorer survival at every stage of diagnosis regardless of endometrial cancer subtype, while 5-year survival rates were similar or higher among Asian and Hispanic women compared with non-Hispanic white women (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2015;Aug 19. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-15-0316).
However, endometrial cancer incidence rates increased among all racial and ethnic groups over the 12-year study period, with rates increasing as much as 2.5 percent per year among non-Hispanic black women and Asian women.
“Prior studies have suggested that disparities in outcomes from endometrial cancer might be explained by differences in tumor subtype or stage at diagnosis, but our data suggest that disparities persist even when these factors are controlled for,” Dr. Cote said in a statement.
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