To be defined as a cluster, all the cancer cases must be one of the following: 1 2 So, in a neighborhood with 100 women you would expect to have a few cases of breast cancer over time.Īlthough these challenges can make studying cancer clusters difficult, they also help us to understand why a group of people getting cancer in a neighborhood may not necessarily be a cluster. One in eight women in the United States will likely be diagnosed in her lifetime (up to age 85). If you have lived in the same home for 10 years, you have had more exposure to your surroundings than someone who has only lived in the neighborhood for six months. And, people living in the same neighborhood may have very different levels of exposure to the same surroundings. Most cancers develop over many years and are not likely due to a recent behavior or a recent contact with something in a person’s environment.When scientists look for clusters, they look for clusters of a certain type of cancer, not just cancer in general. Not only does breast cancer differ from lung cancer or leukemia, there are many types of breast cancer. Cancer basicsīefore looking more closely at cancer clusters, it is important to understand a few things about cancer. 1 When an excess number of cancers occurs, it is important to learn whether something specific to the area may be the cause. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a cancer cluster as a greater than expected number of cancer cases occurring within a group of people in a geographic area over a period of time. Sometimes, certain neighborhoods or towns appear to have more breast cancer than others.
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