Special Studies

A diagnosis of cancer and cancer treatment can affect women for many years afterward, but little is known about how Black women’s lives may change after cancer. This project collects data from Black Women’s Health Study participants who have been diagnosed with cancer to learn about their cancer treatments and how their lives have been affected. The mortality rate from breast cancer, the most commonly occurring cancer among women in the U.S., is 39% higher in Black women than White women. The reasons for this difference are largely unknown, so the research will also study factors that affect death due to breast cancer and other cancer outcomes.

It has become increasingly clear that breast cancer is not a single disease but rather consists of two or more subtypes that may have different causes and require different treatments. A particularly aggressive form of breast cancer (the triple-negative subtype) occurs more often among African American women than U.S. women of other racial/ethnic groups, although it is still relatively uncommon (about 20% of all breast cancers in African American women).  We can lessen our risk of developing the more common type of breast cancer – tumors responsive to estrogens – by avoiding use of menopausal hormones, reducing alcohol intake, and avoiding excess weight gain, but little is known about what factors play a role in triple negative breast cancer.  Therefore, much of the current breast cancer research in the BWHS is focused on triple negative breast cancer.

In addition to breast cancer, we are now collecting tumor tissue for colorectal, kidney, lung, ovarian and uterine cancers. It is very helpful to be able to include information from the tumor itself in our analyses. To do so, we need to obtain the tumor tissue samples that have been stored in laboratories at the hospitals in which women were originally treated for their cancers. We remove a very small section of the tumor tissue and then return the sample to the hospital. Part of the section is used for tests that identify specific subtypes and the rest will be used to look at the biology of the tumor itself. Before requesting samples from the hospitals, we obtain written informed consent from each participant.

We hope and expect that our current and future research using tumor tissue will help to identify ways to identify and treat these diseases.

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Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) are chronic progressive inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) of the gastrointestinal tract with rapidly rising incidence, enormous social and economic impact, and increased mortality. In the US, IBD affects nearly 1.5% of the population and account for significant health care expenditures and decrease quality of life. There are significant racial differences in IBD presentation and natural history in the US. Two of the aims of this study are to identify modifiable lifestyle risk factors for IBD among US Black women and to examine the relationship between individual and environmental stressors on risk of IBD among Black women.

In the United States, Black women are more likely to be diagnosed with later stages of lung cancer and are less likely to be eligible for lung cancer screening compared to White women. Early detection of lung cancer and heart disease is the most promising strategy to reduce the number of lung cancer and heart disease-related deaths. Lung cancer screening has been shown to reduce lung cancer mortality in high-risk populations and it is currently recommended by the United States Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) for individuals who meet the criteria.

The goal of this study is to investigate the use of Low-Dose CT scan (LDCT) screening to identify lung and heart diseases in Black women. These screening exams are used to check for diseases in people who do not feel any symptoms. Screening exams can find diseases early, before they cause symptoms which is when they are easier to treat.

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Even though Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is considered a “well-studied” disorder, African Americans (AA) have been historically underrepresented in PD studies. The goal of this project is to evaluate whether established and suspected risk factors for PD are associated with PD risk in Black women.