Breast cancer is a malignant tumour that starts from cells of the breast.
It occurs mainly in women, but men can get it too. Many people do not realise that men have breast tissue and that they can develop breast cancer.
Until puberty, young boys and girls have a small amount of breast tissue consisting of a few ducts located under the nipple and areola.
At puberty, a girl’s ovaries make female hormones, causing breast ducts to grow, lobules to form at the ends of ducts, and the amount of stroma to increase.
Even after puberty, men and boys normally have low levels of female hormones, and breast tissue doesn’t grow much. Men’s breast tissue has ducts, but only a few if any lobules.
Like all cells of the body, a man’s breast duct cells can undergo cancerous changes.
But breast cancer is less common in men because their breast duct cells are less developed than those of women and because they normally have lower levels of female hormones that affect the growth of breast cells.
Breast cancer is about 100 times less common among men than among women. For men, the lifetime risk of getting breast cancer is about one in 1 000.
Although certain risk factors may increase a man’s chances of developing breast cancer, the cause of most breast cancers in men is unknown.
Most DNA mutations related to male breast cancer occur during life rather than having been inherited before birth.
It’s not clear what causes most of these mutations. Radiation to the breast area is a factor in a small number of cases.
There are some things a man can do to lower his risk of breast cancer. Maintaining an ideal body weight and restricting alcohol consumption are two of them. But since the cause of most breast cancers is unknown, there is no known way to prevent them.
For now, the best strategies for reducing the number of deaths caused by this disease are early detection and prompt treatment. Early detection has been a problem for men, who tend to ignore breast lumps and see their doctor only when the lumps have gotten large.
In general, men are diagnosed with breast cancers at more advanced stages than women.
* Information obtained from www.cancer.org
