Breast cancer and poverty link found in university study

A British university has claimed to have found a link between poverty and the breast cancer gene in a new study published today.

In a paper published in this month’s British Journal of Cancer, Dr Lee Baker suggested that women from deprived backgrounds are more likely to experience a mutation of p53, a tumour suppressor protein, a symptom which is linked to higher cancer relapse and mortality rates.

He said: “Smoking, drinking, poor diet etc can lead to p53 mutations and are more common in women from lower socio-economic groups.”

Dr Baker and the researchers concluded that successfully creating a treatment for the p53 mutation “will go a long way down the road to finding a cure for this form of breast cancer”.

Dr Caitlin Palframan, policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, confirmed that a connection between deprivation and breast cancer survival has previously been documented, but added that the reasons behind this remain unclear.