Mammograms can help to detect breast cancers early, increasing the chance of successful treatment.Credit: Eduardo Briones/Europa Press via Getty
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide, but survival chances vary drastically depending on where a woman lives, a new study shows1.
Using global data, the work paints a detailed picture of breast cancer trends and disparities across countries. Although wealthy nations have more diagnoses, low- and middle-income countries face higher death rates owing to limited access to early detection and treatment.
“This is the best comprehensive global overview of breast cancer,” says Rudolf Kaaks, a cancer epidemiologist at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
The findings — published in Nature Medicine on 24 February1 — could inform health policies worldwide to improve breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, says study lead author Miranda Fidler-Benaoudia, a cancer epidemiologist at Alberta Health Services in Calgary, Canada.
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Fidler-Benaoudia and her colleagues looked at the global impact of breast cancer in 2022, the most recent year for which estimates of cases and deaths were available, and projected the impact in 2050 across 185 countries. The researchers also analysed trends in breast cancer cases and deaths over the past ten years in dozens of countries.
In 2022, there were 2.3 million new cases and 670,000 deaths from breast cancer globally. However, death rates were higher in poorer regions than in wealthier nations (see ‘Global burden’). For example, those aged under 50 in low-income countries were four times more likely to die from breast cancer than were those in high-income countries.
