Alarming breast cancer rates among troops

Alarming breast cancer rates among troops
Army Times
By Jon R. Anderson
Staff writer
Posted : Monday Oct 1, 2012

If you think breast cancer is just something for your grandmother, mom and aunts to worry about, think again. Not only is breast cancer striking relatively young military women at alarming rates, but male service members, veterans and their dependents are at risk, as well.

With their younger and generally healthier population, those in the military tend to have a lower risk for most cancers than civilians, including significantly lower colorectal, lung and cervical cancer rates in certain groups.

GET INVOLVED
As local installations roll out events in conjunction with National Breast Cancer Awareness Month — like the fun runs and walks this week at Fort Polk, La., and Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., and coming up Oct. 19 at Camp Lejeune, N.C. — we want to try an experiment. We’ve set up the MilTimes Boot Breast Cancer Facebook page in hopes of establishing a forum where military people affected by breast cancer can network, tell stories and get the word out about events — like the PCB Navy Diver Wives team raising money for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer on Oct. 27 in Panama City, Fla.

But breast cancer is a different story.

“Military people in general, and in some cases very specifically, are at a significantly greater risk for contracting breast cancer,” says Dr. Richard Clapp, a top cancer expert at Boston University. Clapp, who works for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on military breast cancer issues, says life in the military can mean exposure to a witch’s brew of risk factors directly linked to greater chances of getting breast cancer.

Indeed, in a 2009 study, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center found that breast cancer rates among military women are “significantly higher” — that military women are 20 percent to 40 percent more likely to get the disease than other women in the same age groups.

Researchers point to a higher use of oral contraception — also linked to breast cancer — among military women as a possible culprit.
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