A global five-year, multimillion-pound investigation has been launched into why black people are more likely to develop more aggressive forms of prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers than their white counterparts.
These illnesses disproportionately affect people within ethnic minority groups, with higher mortality rates and earlier onset of the disease, reports The Independent.
Researchers from across the UK, USA and Africa have been awarded £21m to examine the causes of these inequalities, through the Cancer Grand Challenges funding from Cancer Research UK and the US National Cancer Institute.
The study will be co-led by Isidro Cortes-Ciriano from the European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, who described this project as being a “major step forward for understanding and tackling cancer inequities”.
Black women in England are up to twice as likely than white British women to receive a late-stage diagnosis for breast, ovarian, uterine, non-small cell lung cancer and colon cancer – but early detection is crucial.
Late diagnoses mean the disease is generally harder to treat.
In August, Dr Habib Naqvi, chief executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, warned of a “broad misperception” that black women “don’t suffer as much from breast cancer”, which can result in the perception that “cancer is a white person’s disease”.
Equally alarming, compared with white men, black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer.
“We know the number of cancer cases diagnosed in ethnic minority groups is likely to grow over time, meaning that without any action, this gap will continue to widen,” Cancer Research UK chief executive Michelle Mitchell said.
The reasons for these disparities vary, with contributing factors including a lack of awareness, distrust in healthcare systems, delays in seeking help and barriers to accessing diagnostic tests.
Stigma and myths around cancer in black communities can also play a part.
Healthcare professionals and campaigners have called for urgent, targeted research and strategies to address these inequities.
The newly-assembled team of experts will be working under “Project SAMBAI” – Societal, Ancestry, Molecular and Biological Analyses of Inequalities – and analysing social, environmental, genetic and immunological factors around the diseases.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Prostate cancer risk higher for black men – US study
SA cancer cases climb as unequal treatment causes ‘needless deaths’
Cancer deaths in South Africa on the rise
Link between traditional beer and oesophageal cancer – SA study
Cervical cancer survival rates determined by race in SA