Sisters With Breast Cancer

My clever sister has told me about a study that is currently being conducted for women whose sisters have breast cancer.

The Sister Study is the only long-term study of women aged 35-74 whose sisters had/have breast cancer. It is a study to learn how environment and genes affect the chances of getting breast cancer, and it's enrolling 50,000 women from various backgrounds to try to find the causes of the disease.

More women from specific groups are still needed to ensure that the study represents all women. They're still looking for women from the following groups that are underrepresented in the study to date:

1) African-Americans, Latinas, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans between ages 35-74.

2) Caucasian women between the ages of 65-74 or with a high school degree or less.

Participants need to be U.S. residents, but even people who don't qualify for the study themselves can still help with the recruiting process.

To learn more about this study, go to this Web site: www.sisterstudy.org.

If you're in the U.S., you can call this number for more information: 1-877-4SISTER (877-474-7837).

My sister lives in the U.S. and is participating in the Sister Study. If you have any questions for her, you can post them as a comment on this blog and I'm sure she'll be happy to answer them.

If you live in the U.S. and have a sister with breast cancer, this is your chance to contribute to the knowledge about breast cancer so that our daughters, nieces, friends' daughters and the next generation of women will have a better chance of preventing or fighting this disease.