Real-World Data Highlight Male Breast Cancer Population Outcome Disparities

Including more male patients with breast cancer in clinical trials may help to accrue more data on survival disparities in this population, said Jason (Jincong) Q. Freeman, MPH, MS, in a conversation with CancerNetwork^®.

At the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), Freeman, a doctoral student in the University of Chicago Department of Public Health Sciences and a volunteer epidemiologist at the Chicago Department of Public Health, spoke about findings from a real-world study assessing racial and ethnic disparities in overall survival (OS) outcomes among male patients with breast cancer. When adjusting for characteristics such as age at diagnosis, histologic type, and molecular subtype, Black patients with breast cancer had a significantly higher mortality risk compared with White patients (HR, 1.21; 95% CI, 1.08-1.34; P = .001). Additionally, data from an analysis that adjusted for socioeconomic factors such as household income and type of health insurance found no significant differences in mortality risks between Black and White patients (HR, 1.05; 95% CI, 0.93-1.19; P = .399).

Transcript:

In our study in [male patients with] breast cancer, we observed that Asian or Pacific Islander and Hispanic patients had a lower risk of mortality compared with White patients. This was consistent with the female breast cancer [population] with these disparities in overall survival. In our study, we only did 2 models comparing [outcomes in] Black and White patients. In the first model, we only included age and some clinicopathological characteristics. When we looked at that model, we did see a higher risk among Black male patients [compared with] White male patients. This was surprising. When we additionally adjusted for some of the socioeconomic factors with the second model, we did not see significant results, meaning that the mortality rate was actually very similar when comparing [outcomes in] Black and White male patients.

Particularly, I hope that maybe we can do something about this in clinical settings, which would be great. We wanted to improve patients’ health, and male breast cancer has been a really understudied population in breast cancer. But the good thing is [organizations like] the National Cancer Institute [NCI] are calling to include male patients [with breast cancer] in clinical trials. I think that’s encouraging. From a clinical standing, considering some of the clinical trial enrollments and enrolling more [male patients with] breast cancer to get more data and research on some of the disparities will be good, too.

Reference

Freeman J, Hara J, Omoleye O, Li J, Guo W. Racial/ethnic differences in overall survival of male patients with stage I-III breast cancer using real-world data. Presented at the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS); December 5-9, 2023; San Antonio, TX; abstract PO2-09-09.