An estimated one in eight women will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer at some point in her life. Although breast cancer can also affect men, it is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women. In 2011, over 230,000 women and over 2,000 men were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Roughly 39,520 American women are expected to die from breast cancer by the end of 2011.
Risk factors for breast cancer include:
- A family history
- Genes defects (most commonly on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes)
- Getting your period early (before 12 years old)
- Being over the age of 50 and a woman
- Drinking more than 1 or 2 glasses of alcohol daily
- Never giving birth
- Having children after 30 years old
- Hormone replacement therapy
- Receiving radiation therapy as a child.
The most significant risk factors of this disease are being an older woman. What’s so scary about breast cancer is that 85 percent of breast cancers occur in women who do not have a family history of it.