SEATTLE — More younger women in the U.S. are getting breast cancer, including increases among Asian American Pacific Islander women, according to a report released by the American Cancer Society.
The group released its biennial breast cancer statistics report for 2024, showing some of the steepest rises were among younger, Asian American Pacific Islander women (AAPI).
Tiffany Ju, a fashion designer and local business owner, is among the statistics.
Breast cancer was not on her mind as she founded Chunks, a Seattle-based hair accessories business.
"I knew the 90s and the 2000s were kind of coming back into trend," Ju said.
Ju launched the brand in 2019 and the timing was right as pandemic closures settled in.
"No one was buying clothing, everything was Zoom, no one was getting haircuts. Everyone could buy this fun, colorful, $20 product and send to their sister who they hadn't seen in a long time," Ju said.
As her company was taking off, never did she imagine that in a few years, her hair — the very part that defines her business — would be gone.
At just 38 years old, Ju got the shock of her life.
"I got diagnosed with breast cancer," Ju shared openly on her social media accounts when she found out in 2023.
"You know, I had kind of had this inkling for maybe a year or two prior, that something was off in my body in general. Something with my immune system," Ju said.
She later noticed a drop of blood on her bra.
"It didn't alarm me at the time. I just thought maybe it was an infected duct or something, so I quickly just shot a message to my GP and she was like 'No, come in today, like right now'," Ju said.
A mammogram and several biopsies confirmed Ju had HER2-positive breast cancer.
"The biopsy came back positive and I got a call from the doctor, at like 8 a.m., right before I was about to take my kid to school. I just had to sit down, I was like, what? Because I was 38 at the time and there was no breast cancer in my family, so it just seemed so out of left field," Ju said.
Ju is not alone.
The American Cancer Society (ACS) report pointed to an upward trend in breast cancer incidence among women younger than 50, rising by 1% every year between 2012 and 2021. An estimated 262,000 women in the U.S. younger than age 50 had breast cancer in 2021, according to data from the National Cancer Institute.
While the ACS report shows deaths from breast cancer have gone down, breast cancer incidence among women under 50 years has gone up among AAPI women by 50 percent since 2000, according to the ACS report. It surpasses the rate in young Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Black women to become the biggest rate alongside White women.
The reasons are still unclear.
"It's a good question and to be honest, we don't know," said Dr. Kathryn Lowry, an associate professor of radiology at UW Medicine and a radiologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.
Lowry and other doctors in the field of breast cancer diagnosis have said across the board, that more research is needed.
For example, studies are looking into whether estrogen exposure over a lifetime plays a factor, among other things.
"So things like fertility rates, obesity; that may be one factor that's contributing. It's probably not one single factor but a combination of things," Lowry said.
As for the rising rates among younger AAPI women, Lowry said the hope is the latest data will spur more research.
"I think this has historically been an understudied population," Lowry said.
This year, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force made its final recommendation that women should begin routine breast cancer screening starting at age 40.
"We're kind of seeing both the research side and the policy side respond to this," Lowry said.
"There's no real answer for why it happens," Ju said.
But what Ju does know, is more young women should be aware.
"You have to listen to your body. I'm so thankful that I did," Ju said.
Now, after chemotherapy and a round of radiation, Ju's cancer is in remission and she's on medication. She said it was a blessing she caught her breast cancer early.
"It's also very treatable and I'm also really young, and I caught it early enough where she was like, you'll be fine," Ju said.