Biomarkers found linking ER-positive breast cancer with neighborhood deprivation
Scientists have long known that Black women with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer and those who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods often have more aggressive forms of the disease and poorer survival rates. However, the underlying factors that link these outcomes with women’s living environments have remained unclear.
Scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Illinois Chicago led a recent study that explored the molecular signatures associated with neighborhood disadvantage by analyzing plasma and tumor samples taken from Chicago-area women with ER-positive breast cancer. The team found that patients who lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods had elevated levels of proteins, metabolites and genes associated with inflammation and tumorigenesis — the process whereby normal cells transform into cancer cells and form tumors — compared with the women from more affluent areas.
“The study sample included women who lived in very affluent neighborhoods as well as those from extremely disadvantaged areas,” said first author Hannah Heath, who is a predoctoral fellow in food science and human nutrition at Illinois. “We found that women who were living in disadvantaged neighborhoods — both those with cancer and the healthy controls — had extremely high levels of inflammatory proteins. Within the tumor samples, we also found dysregulated expression of genes related to DNA repair. Both of those things are associated with worsened prognoses.”