Breast cancer histology in Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and pacific islanders

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Abstract
Study objectives. To investigate the association between race/ethnicity and histologic types of breast cancer. Design. Cross‐sectional study. Setting. Population‐based data from the Northern California Tumor Registry, which is part of the National Cancer Institute's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program. Participants. A total of 2759 breast cancer cases diagnosed in 1988. Main results. Tumors were classified as ductal, lobular, and mixed/unspecified carcinoma. Ductal carcinoma was the most common (83.6%) and lobular carcinoma was the rarest. Most cases were diagnosed in the localized stage (56.3%). Caucasian women had the highest rates of total breast cancer (240.9/100 000), ductal and lobular. In African‐American women, the odds of ductal carcinoma were twice that of lobular carcinoma, compared with Caucasian women (odds ratio [OR] = 2.0, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.0–3.9) after adjusting for age, site, and stage at diagnosis. Similarly, Asian and Hispanic women also had higher, non‐statistically significant odds of ductal versus lobular carcinoma compared with Caucasians (OR = 1.8 [95% CI 0 9–3.7] and 1.6 [95% CI 0.8–3.4], respectively). Conclusions. Future studies should investigate how racial/ethnic differences in histology among breast cancer patients will influence life expectancy, against a backdrop of health care access, sociocultural issues, lifestyle habits, reproductive history, family history, and tumor characteristics.