Why is age an important risk factor for breast cancer?
As with many diseases, the aging process is often the culprit. The human body is continually bombarded by external influences such as sunlight, bacteria, viruses, air pollutants, cigarettes, and alcohol along with many other things. This continual bombardment can cause mutations to genes within the body, errors in cell division, and errors in DNA copying. The longer we live the more mutations occur in our genes. If certain genes are affected, breast cancer may occur. The best evidence for the importance of age as a predictor of breast cancer risk probably comes from looking at how many women in different age categories get breast cancer. For women of all races combined, we would expect 26 women out of 100,000 between the ages of 30-34 to get breast cancer. That is compared to 229 women between the ages 50-54 and 484 women between the ages 75-79. The average age of diagnosis is 61-62. Despite the hard evidence that these numbers provide, there still exists the common misperception that
