The formula that doctors use to calculate a woman’s risk of breast cancer underestimates the danger for black women most of the time and especially for those age 50 and older – the age when they are most likely to benefit from screening tests and protective drugs, according to the first major reassessment of the widely used tool.

“We’ve been concerned about the assumptions we had to make for African American women and other racial and ethnic groups for some time,” said Mitchell H. Gail, a biostatistician at the National Cancer Institute who led the reevaluation of the formula he himself developed. “It turns out that we have been underestimating the risk for African American women.” Full Story from The Washington Post