Breast cancer deaths in the US continue to fall, but new report warns of rise in cases among women younger than 50

Despite a continuous decline in the rate of breast cancer deaths in the United States, the incidence of the disease has increased, especially among younger ages, and significant racial disparities remain, according to a new American Cancer Society report.

The study, published Tuesday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, found some good news: The overall breast cancer death rate in the US dropped about 44% between 1989 and 2022, which translates to almost 518,000 fewer breast cancer deaths during that time. This is largely thanks to advances in cancer treatments and in detecting illness early through screening, which is recommended for women at average risk starting at age 40.

But there was also some concerning news: The incidence of the disease itself climbed 1% each year from 2012 to 2021.

“If we look at the last decade or so, we’ve seen breast cancer incidence rise at about a 1% year-over-year increase, and the steepness of that increase does not affect all women in this case equally,” said Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

“There is a slightly higher increase in the rate of breast cancer diagnosis for women who are under age 50 versus those that are above age 50,” she said. “These are things that we are watching to try to understand.”

A separate study published in January also found that breast cancer incidence rates among women ages 20 to 49 rose over the past 20 years.

The trend follows a pattern seen recently with other cancer types, such as colorectal cancer, in that more people are being diagnosed at younger ages than has traditionally been seen.

For the new report, researchers from the American Cancer Society, Weill Cornell Medicine and Harvard Medical School analyzed data on breast cancer incidence and deaths from the National Cancer Institute and registries at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dating to 1975. They found some significant differences in the data by race and state as well as age.

The researchers found that Black women continue to be more likely to die from the disease, as they had a 38% higher death rate than White women despite being 5% less likely to develop breast cancer.

“If you look actually more carefully at the mortality data, this is really driven by young women particularly,” said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer at the American Cancer Society. “If you look at Black women between the ages of 20 and 29, their chances of dying from breast cancer is two times greater than their White colleagues.”