Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness month! we thought about sharing some interesting facts about breast cancer which you may not have known!
Fact 1: Breast cancer has been called the “nun’s disease” hundrends of years ago because of the high number of nuns affected.
The reason this is so is because lifelong nuns are not reproductive and it makes them have an increased risk of breast cancer, and other cancers like ovarian and uterine cancers.
Fact 2: Breast cancer occurs in both dogs and cats; it tends to be far more aggressive in cats
It is more common in dogs than cats, but tends to be more aggressive in cats than dogs.
Fact 3: Wasp dung was used as a treatment for breast cancer
Insect faeces featured heavily in ancient remedies for breast cancer. An Egyptian papyrus recommended a mixture of cow’s brain and wasp dung to be applied to breast tumours for four days. Insect faeces were still considered one of the most advanced treatments for breast cancer up until the Middle Ages. Thankfully, treatments have advanced a great deal since then.
Fact 4: The first record of a mastectomy offered for breast cancer was over 1,500 years ago
The first record of a breast mastectomy was in A.D. 548 on Theodora, Empress of Byzantine. Significant progress in our understanding and treatment of breast cancer in recent decades has seen a dramatic reduction in the use of ‘radical’ mastectomy (where the breast, underlying chest muscle and lymph nodes are removed), which was the standard surgical approach to breast cancer right up until the 1960s.
Fact 5: Men get breast cancer too. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000
Men have breast tissue and they can develop breast cancer, even though is less common because their breast duct cells are less developed than those of women and because they normally have lower levels of female hormones that affect the growth of breast cells.
Fact 6: Breast cancer is more common in the left breast than the right
The left breast is 5 – 10% more likely to develop cancer than the right breast. The left side of the body is also roughly 5% more prone to melanoma (a type of skin cancer). Nobody is exactly sure why this is.
Fact 7: Most women now survive breast cancer (at least in developed countries)
Death rates from breast cancer in more developed countries have been declining in recent years, and now survival rates are 80% or over in countries like the US, Sweden and Japan. However, survival rates remain below 40% in low-income countries.
source: roche.com/stories
