Abstract
Much attention has been paid to thefeatures of breast cancer in Africa and theparallels between breast cancer in indige-nous Africans and in African Americanwomen, including a shift toward earlieronset; a tendency toward poorer out-comes; and an increased likelihood forthe tumors to be negative for the estrogenreceptor (ER), the progesterone receptor(PR), and/or the human epidermal growthfactor receptor-2 (HER2) [1,2]. One of themore aggressive forms of breast cancer istermed ‘‘triple negative,’’ i.e., ER2,PR2,HER22 [3]. Patients with triple negativebreast cancer tend to be younger thanpatients with other forms of the disease,and at all ages, the triple negative subtypeis more common in women of Africandescent than in the white women in theUnited States [4–6].
Highlights
A systematic review examining breast cancer subtypes in Africa is published in this week’s PLOS Medicine by Isabel dos-Santos-Silva and colleagues [7]
Of 54 studies from North Africa, approximately 80% of all the studies reviewed were from Egypt or Tunisia
In a systematic review and meta-analysis, Isabel dos-Santos-Silva and colleagues estimate the prevalence of receptor-defined subtypes of breast cancer in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa
Summary
A systematic review examining breast cancer subtypes in Africa is published in this week’s PLOS Medicine by Isabel dos-Santos-Silva and colleagues [7]. A takehome message of the review article is that caution should be exercised in stating what we know (or think we know) about the receptor status of breast cancers in Africa. The paucity of breast cancer–relevant research in Africa means that any generalization will be based on relatively few studies of varying quality from relatively few places on a very diverse continent. In subSaharan Africa (nearly 50 countries), two countries (Nigeria and South Africa) contributed more than half of the 26 studies. Perspectives are commissioned from an expert and discuss the clinical practice or public health implications of a published study. The original publication must be freely available online
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