Cases in U.K. top 40,000 for first time.

2003 JUL 3 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- More than 40,000 British women are now annually diagnosed with breast cancer - an all-time high, according to new figures released on June 2, 2003, by Cancer Research U.K. And experts believe the trend is set to continue for some time to come.

However, more women are being successfully treated than ever before with three out of four surviving for five years or more.

Death rates are down significantly; around 13,000 women died of breast cancer in 2001, a decrease of 21% over the last decade. This decline can be attributed to improvements in treatments and the success of the screening program, according to Cancer Research U.K.

Prof. Jack Cuzick, head of Cancer Research U.K.'s Epidemiology, Mathematics & Statistics Department at the Wolfson Institute for Preventive Medicine in London, explains: "Tamoxifen has been in use for 20 years and the screening program has been up and running for the last 15. These two advances alone account for significant improvements in survival.

"The reasons behind the increase in incidence are more complex and we're just beginning to understand the risk factors. The levels of the female hormone estrogen seem to be important but these levels depend on a number of other variables. We know that obesity in postmenopausal women is a risk factor and that it can raise the levels of estrogen. We also know that levels of obesity have been rising steadily in the past decade and this may be contributing to the upward trend. But many of the risk factors are difficult or ...