New study estimates number of U.S. women living with metastatic breast cancer

Filling in the gaps on an ‘understudied population’

First-ever estimate of women living with metastatic breast cancer shows these patients are living longer with disease

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have used a “mathematical recipe” to solve a longstanding puzzle: How many women in the U.S. are currently living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC).  

Published this week in the journal Cancer, Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the study estimates that as of January 2017 there are nearly 155,000 women living with the disease in the U.S., a quarter of whom were diagnosed from the very start with advanced cancer — known as de novo — and three quarters who progressed to MBC from early stage disease.

This is the first time the number of women living with MBC has been estimated, and it is part of an ongoing effort by the NCI to provide data on what it calls an “understudied population.”

All told, 3.5 million U.S. women have a history of breast cancer — from those who were just diagnosed, to those who’ve gone through treatment for early stage disease, to those who were initially or eventually diagnosed with MBC.

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