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Research Letter
March 7, 2018

Race/Ethnicity and Age Distribution of Breast Cancer Diagnosis in the United States

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston
JAMA Surg. Published online March 7, 2018. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2018.0035

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) currently recommends initiating breast cancer screening at 50 years of age in patients at average risk.1 However, we hypothesize that these guidelines may not be sensitive to racial differences and may be inappropriately extrapolating data from largely white populations for use in racially diverse populations. This process could result in underscreening of nonwhite female patients. These concerns are similar to broader discussions regarding sex bias in the clinical research process, leading to recent policy changes at the National Institutes of Health and the US Food and Drug Administration.2 The goal of this study is to assess the age distribution of breast cancer diagnosis across race/ethnicity in the United States.

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