New data helps doctors with Breast Cancer risks,Treatments

Triple negative is one of four subtypes of breast cancer, and a new report emphasizes how important it is for doctors to identify the risks and treatments for each. For example, triple negative cancers do not respond to certain hormonal therapies that can help other women.
The nationwide data, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and co-authored by the American Association of Central Cancer Registries, the American Cancer Society, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health  may help doctors identify which patients are at most risk for each type of breast cancer and which treatments may be most effective.
The authors of the paper looked at the impact of a number of genetic, environmental and social factors including ethnicity, race, age and poverty level that may contribute to breast cancer risk.
When a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer, her doctor must identify the subtype in order to provide the best and most effective treatment to help her beat the disease. The four subtypes are classified by their hormone receptor (HR) status and expression of the HER2 gene. They are known as Luminal A (HR+/HER2-), Luminal B (HR+/HER2+), HER2-enriched (HR-/HER2+) or triple negative (HR-/HER2-) breast cancer.
Doctors are now reporting their patients' breast cancer subtypes to cancer registries nationwide, which could help develop further investigations about why certain demographics of women are more likely to develop one subtype or another.