Young women in Canada were more likely to get breast cancer in recent years than three decades ago, according to a new analysis that shows the rates increased most among patients in their 20s and 30s.
The rising rates of breast cancer among Canadian women in their 20s and 30s – when many are in the prime of life, completing post-secondary education, raising young children and scaling the career ladder – is part of a larger trend toward increasing incidence of early-onset cancers in developed countries the world over.
“It’s a mystery,” said Shuji Ogino, a professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and one of the authors of the Nature paper. “But we know many risk factors already for adult cancer. We have good hypotheses.” The researchers found that among those in their 20s, there were, on average, 5.7 cases per 100,000 people of breast cancer annually between 2015 and 2019, up from 3.9 cases per 100,000 between 1984 and 1988 – a 45.5-per-cent increase.
When it comes to breast cancer, another factor could be the trend of delaying or forgoing childbearing in wealthy countries, including in Canada. The new paper notes that the average age at which Canadian women give birth rose to 31.6 in 2022, up from 23.5 in 1966. Hormone changes that occur during pregnancy and breastfeeding are believed to lower risk for breast cancer.
One factor that isn’t contributing to the increase is screening. That’s because regular screening mammograms are not recommended for average-risk women in their 20s and 30s in Canada.
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