There may be a link between childhood obesity and cancer later in life, Dr. Bert Petersen said at a Health Department cancer forum held at the Westin Resort and Villas on St. John.
The forum, organized by the Health Department’s Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection program, covered many aspects of cancer care and treatment. And while the welter of statistics included some already widely known — such as the higher incidence of cancer among minority groups — others were new, contentious and alarming.
Petersen, a St. Thomas-born cancer consultant based in New York, said that while the average age for a girl to get her first period stood at 13, doctors are now seeing girls as young as eight starting to menstruate. He contended this was due to the increase in obesity among children. Earlier menstrual periods mean that girls develop breasts younger, which leads to an increase in breast cancer, he said. Petersen also said estrogen is also produced in body fat, which helps to fuel breast cancers.
However, 84 percent of deaths from breast cancer occur in women over 50, Petersen said.
While women are the primary sufferers of breast cancer, men also get the disease. Petersen said. National statistics show that 200,000 women a year get breast cancer. For men, the number stands at 1,500.
And Petersen stressed that despite recent recommendations that women begin mammograms at age 50, they should start at age 40. He called the age 50 guideline “irresponsible.”
Gloria Callwood of the University of the Virgin Islands’ Caribbean Exploratory Research Center noted that the number of blacks and Hispanics who develop cancer and die from it is higher than the general population.
“The female death rate for cancer is 17 percent higher than among white females,” Callwood said, citing American Cancer Society statistics for black women.
The death rate for black men is 34 percent higher than for white men. Callwood said that Hispanics also have a higher rate.
Some of the statistics were alarming. Callwood said that only 51 percent of breast cancers in black women are diagnosed before they spread compared to 62 percent for white women. The number of cervical cancers are 32 percent higher in black women than white women. Callwood also said that black men have the highest mortality rate of deaths from prostate cancer than any other ethnic group.
According to Callwood, 82.4 percent of women over age 18 had a Pap test to detect cervical cancer in the past three years, 68.9 percent of women over age 40 had a mammogram to look for breast cancer, but only 58.7 percent of men over 40 had a PSA test for prostate cancer.
Shaniece Charlemagne, who serves as the interim director at the Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, pointed out that cervical cancers can be found early with regular Pap tests.
“But 60 to 80 percent of the women with cervical cancer have not had a Pap test in the last five years, Charlemagne said.
