Due to mistrust of the healthcare system, many black women may delay getting treatment for breast cancer.

A new study based on black women in Georgia, USA, has found that African American women diagnosed with breast cancer are less likely to receive adequate medical treatment, regardless of healthcare insurance.

The study aimed to determine why black women have an increased risk of breast cancer and death from the disease. It was previously assumed that disparities in breast cancer treatment between blacks and whites were due to a lack of healthcare insurance.

The study, conducted by Healthcore, a research subsidiary of Wellpoint, anaylsed medical data of over 3000 women on health insurance plans who were diagnosed with breast cancer between January 2000 and August 2005.

The researchers found several factors contributed towards worse outcomes for blacks, including being diagnosed at a younger age and later stage and having a lower prevalence of hormone-positive breast cancer, lower rates of hormone therapy for certain patients and higher prevalence of hypertension.

According to Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer of the American Cancer Society and co-author of the study, due to mistrust of the healthcare system, many black women may delay getting treatment for breast cancer.

The study recommends that strategies to increase the earlier detection of breast cancer should be culturally sensitive and should seek to increase the number of patients receiving hormonal therapy.

In June 2006 a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that young black women with breast cancer develop more aggressive and deadly tumors than white women or older black women.

The study found that although breast cancer is less common in blacks than whites, when black women do develop the disease, they are more likely to die from it, especially if they are under 50. Among those younger women, the breast cancer death rate in blacks is 11 per 100,000, compared with only 6.3 in whites.