A number of interventions can help reduce breast cancer among women at high risk, but uptake is sluggish, and there can be confusion about which agent to prescribe to a given patient. Seema Khan, MD, professor of surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, addressed the topic of pharmacologic risk reduction at the 2011 Breast Cancer Symposium.

Researchers have found that, when cancer is diagnosed in women aged younger than 45 years, the incidence of primary breast cancer is higher among blacks than among whites.