Breast cancer risk tool revised for blacks- msnbc.com: WASHINGTON - A widely used tool for predicting a woman’s risk of breast cancer is getting an update — to better reflect black women’s risk.
At issue is the National Cancer Institute’s online risk calculator. Answer a few questions — such as current age, age when your first child was born, family history of breast cancer — and learn your odds of getting breast cancer in the next five years.
But the calculator has a caveat: It was created using studies of breast cancer in white women. A warning flashes telling non-white women that the answer they’re about to get comes with some uncertainty.
Now scientists are updating the calculations to reflect newer data on black women and cancer.
It turns out the original calculator had been slightly underestimating risk for black women 45 and older — and slightly overestimating risk for younger black women, NCI researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
