A recent study found race itself may be an underlying difference in death rates between Black and white patients with head and neck cancers.
The study, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Dec. 7, matched 468 Black participants with 468 white participants with similar age, health status and cancer stage. Participants largely received the same cancer care. Race was self-reported.
The study found that in 60 percent of pairs, Black participants had worse outcomes than white participants. Black participants were more likely to have worse outcomes overall.
"Our study strongly supports the conclusion that Black patients seem to respond to therapy differently than white patients," study author Jeffrey Liu, MD, associate professor in the division of head and neck surgery at Fox Chase Cancer Center and the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University, both in Philadelphia, told U.S. News & World Report. "The bottom line is that people are different. When you put together groups of patients, however imperfect the grouping, some people may be less responsive to therapy than others. Our next steps are to try to understand why this is the case."
Race is a social construct rather than biological, he noted in the report, so it can be imperfect for grouping patients. However, until medicine advances to the point where a patient's genetic profile can be used, race will continue to be part of research, Dr. Liu said.