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Review
. 2023 Mar 22;15(6):1917.
doi: 10.3390/cancers15061917.

What Is Known about Breast Cancer in Young Women?

Jie Wei Zhu  1   2 , Parsa Charkhchi  1 , Shadia Adekunte  1 , Mohammad R Akbari  1   3   4
Affiliations
Review

What Is Known about Breast Cancer in Young Women?

Jie Wei Zhu et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Breast cancer (BC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in women under the age of 40 years worldwide. In addition, the incidence of breast cancer in young women (BCYW) has been rising. Young women are not the focus of screening programs and BC in younger women tends to be diagnosed in more advanced stages. Such patients have worse clinical outcomes and treatment complications compared to older patients. BCYW has been associated with distinct tumour biology that confers a worse prognosis, including poor tumour differentiation, increased Ki-67 expression, and more hormone-receptor negative tumours compared to women >50 years of age. Pathogenic variants in cancer predisposition genes such as BRCA1/2 are more common in early-onset BC compared to late-onset BC. Despite all these differences, BCYW remains poorly understood with a gap in research regarding the risk factors, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. Age-specific clinical characteristics or outcomes data for young women are lacking, and most of the standard treatments used in this subpopulation currently are derived from older patients. More age-specific clinical data and treatment options are required. In this review, we discuss the epidemiology, clinicopathologic characteristics, outcomes, treatments, and special considerations of breast cancer in young women. We also underline future directions and highlight areas that require more attention in future studies.

Keywords: breast cancer; young women.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 2
Figure 2
Major differences of breast cancer in young women compared to older women, including more aggressive clinicopathological features, lower survival rates, and increased risk of metastasis and mortality. References: [204,206,225,243].
Figure 1
Figure 1
Risk factors associated with breast cancer in young women of onset development including lifestyle risk, genetic risk factors, and reproductive risk factors. SNPs: single nucleotide polymorphisms.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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