Black women have a 19% higher mortality rate for hormone receptor (HR)-positive breast cancer types than non-Hispanic white women, despite having a 22% lower incidence rate, according to research published on 18 June in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers led by Dr. Ahmedin Jemal from the American Cancer Society also found that Black women have a 123% higher mortality rate for HR-negative breast cancer compared with white women, despite having a 65% higher incidence rate.
The team wrote that their findings dismiss the idea that Black women have higher breast cancer death rates largely because they are diagnosed with aggressive types of breast cancer.
"Cancer disparities in the Black community result from a myriad of causes rooted in institutional inequities," said Jemal in a statement from the American Cancer Society. "We must address structural racism as a public health issue to close the gaps, advance health equity, and ensure Black women get the screening and treatment they need and deserve."
![Overview of the study design. (A) The fully automated deep learning framework was developed to estimate body composition (BC) (defined as subcutaneous adipose tissue [SAT] in liters; visceral adipose tissue [VAT] in liters; skeletal muscle [SM] in liters; SM fat fraction [SMFF] as a percentage; and intramuscular adipose tissue [IMAT] in deciliters) from MRI. The fully automated framework comprised one model (model 1) to quantify different BC measures (SAT, VAT, SM, SMFF, and IMAT) as three-dimensional (3D) measures from whole-body MRI scans. The second model (model 2) was trained to identify standardized anatomic landmarks along the craniocaudal body axis (z coordinate field), which allowed for subdividing the whole-body measures into different subregions typically examined on clinical routine MRI scans (chest, abdomen, and pelvis). (B) BC was quantified from whole-body MRI in over 66,000 individuals from two large population-based cohort studies, the UK Biobank (UKB) (36,317 individuals) and the German National Cohort (NAKO) (30,291 individuals). Bar graphs show age distribution by sex and cohort. BMI = body mass index. (C) After the performance assessment of the fully automated framework, the change in BC measures, distributions, and profiles across age decades were investigated. Age-, sex-, and height-adjusted body composition reference curves were calculated and made publicly available in a web-based z-score calculator (https://circ-ml.github.io).](https://img.auntminnieeurope.com/mindful/smg/workspaces/default/uploads/2026/05/body-comp.XgAjTfPj1W.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&dpr=2&fit=crop&h=167&q=70&w=250)
