give separate advice based on race or ethnicity.
“We strongly recommend that all women consider mammography screening from age 40 onward,” Kamal says.
For the study — published April 19 in JAMA Network Open — researchers analyzed U.S. government data on breast cancer deaths between 2011 and 2020.
They found that among women in their 40s, deaths from the disease were nearly doubled among Black women, compared with white women: The yearly death rate from breast cancer was 27 per 100,000 Black women, versus 15 of every 100,000 white women. Death rates were lowest among Asian, Hispanic and Native American women, at 11 per 100,000.
According to the researchers’ calculations, the average 42-year-old Black woman has already reached the same risk of dying from breast cancer as the average 50-year-old woman in the U.S. population as a whole.
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So for Black women, it makes sense to start screening by that age.
The results won’t shake up any guidelines. Clinical trials are the best way to make any new screening recommendations that take race and ethnicity into account, says senior researcher Dr. Mahdi Fallah of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
But that would take years, he notes. In the meantime, Fallah says, doctors can use this information when talking to patients about screening decisions. He pointed to the USPSTF recommendation that women in their 40s make that decision after discussing the risks and benefits with their doctor.
“This study provides the precise information that [doctors] would need for a race- and ethnicity-tailored starting age of