Breast cancer is one of the world’s most prevalent types of cancer worldwide. It is a tumor that starts in the milk ducts of the breast and then spreads into the surrounding breast tissue and, sometimes, other parts of the body.
About 98 percent of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer at stage 1 will live another five years and more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But just an estimated 25 percent of women survive if their cancer is diagnosed when it’s already spread to other organs.
The number of people being diagnosed with breast cancer has been skyrocketing in the past years, with younger women being increasingly affected, so much so that, in the U.S., breast cancer has been branded as an “epidemic.”
What this means, why this is happening, and what should be done about it is something thousands of experts in the field of cancer research are working hard to discover.
