TAILORx Shows Black Women With Breast Cancer Have Worse Clinical Outcomes

Black women with hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative, node-negative breast cancer had worse clinical outcomes compared with white women in the phase 3 TAILORx trial, despite havingsimilar recurrence scores and receiving comparable systemic therapy. The results were presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) in San Antonio, Texas.¹

The preplanned analysis included 9719 participants from the TAILORx trial. The relationship between clinical outcomes and race (determined using either self-identified race or genetically determined ancestry) and ethnicity were evaluated. Broken down by race, the trial included 8189 white women (84%), 693 black women (7%), 405 Asian women (4%), and 432 women categorized as other/unknown race (4%). Broken down by ethnicity, the trial included 7635 non-Hispanic women (79%), 889 Hispanic women (9%), and 1195 women whose ethnicity was labeled as unknown (12%). 

Patients with breast cancer who were black had the same median recurrence risk as patients who were white (recurrence score distribution; 17 vs 17). Similarly, Hispanic patients had the same median recurrence risk as patients who were non-Hispanic (17 vs 17). 

Black women with breast cancer had worse invasive disease-free survival (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.33; P = .005), distant relapse-free interval (HR = 1.21; P = .28), relapse-free interval (HR = 1.39; P= .02), and overall survival (HR = 1.52; P = .005) compared with white patients with breast cancer. 

“Careful attention to monitoring adherence to endocrine therapy for all races and ethnicities is necessary,” said the study presenter Kathy Albain, MD, Huizenga Family Endowed Chair in Oncology Research and professor of medicine at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and director of the Breast and Thoracic Oncology Programs at the Cardinal Bernardin Cancer Center of Loyola Medicine in Maywood, Illinois. “These findings add to emerging evidence that biologic basis with or without other factors may contribute to racial outcomes disparities in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer.”

Read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s coverage of the SABCS 2018 meeting by visiting the conference page.

Reference

1. Albain, Gray J, Sparano A, et al. Race, ethnicity and clinical outcomes in hormone receptor-positive, HER2-negative, node-negative breast cancer: results from the TAILORx trial. Oral presentation at: 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; December 4-8, 2018; San Antonio, TX. Abstract GS4-07.