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Race, Income Appear to Limit Access to Immunotherapy Treatment for Aggressive Breast Cancer   

What: Black patients with an aggressive form of breast cancer known as “triple-negative” were less likely to get a treatment known as immunotherapy than white patients. Researchers found a 11% lower rate for immunotherapy for Black patients, but that dropped once adjusted for socioeconomic factors.

Why it matters: “Freeman noted that this suggests that socioeconomic factors might be the main barriers to immunotherapy access for Black patients with early-stage TNBC, but he acknowledged that the data represent an early snapshot since immunotherapy for early-stage TNBC was not approved until mid-2021. …’A key finding of our study is that Black patients with metastatic TNBC were less likely than white patients to have received immunotherapy, but when they did receive immunotherapy, they had a similar overall survival rate as white patients,’ said Freeman. ‘This tells us that receiving immunotherapy may help mitigate racial differences in the survival of patients with metastatic TNBC.’”

Source: American Association for Cancer Research

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