Risk differs among specific ethnic subgroups of South Asian women in U.K.

2004 FEB 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Cancer Research UK scientists have discovered that the risk of breast cancer among South Asian women in Britain differs according to their specific ethnic subgroup.

Published in the January 6, 2004, issue of the British Journal of Cancer (Br J Cancer, 2004;90[1]), the new study shows that Muslim women from India and Pakistan are almost twice as likely to develop the disease than Gujarati Hindu women.

The researchers suggest that the trend may be caused by differences in lifestyle factors such as diet and body size between the two groups of women.

Valerie McCormack, the study's lead author, and her colleagues, based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, interviewed over 700 first-generation South Asian women from the West Midlands and the London area of England, including 240 women who had been treated for breast cancer.

The women were categorized as Gujarati Hindu, Punjabi Hindu, Punjabi Sikh, Pakistani and Indian Muslim, or Bangladeshi Muslim. The researchers began by working out which groups of women were more likely to develop breast cancer.

In general, McCormack's group found, South Asian women living in England are less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than their native-English counterparts. The researchers believe, however, that this observation hides a more complicated picture.

They found that Pakistani and Indian Muslim women are nearly twice as likely to develop breast cancer than Gujarati Hindu women. The researchers could not tell if there was any difference in breast cancer risk between Punjabi Sikh and Hindu women, and Gujarati Hindus because the number of Punjabi women was too small to reach any firm conclusion.