VIDEO: Breast cancer incidence rates rising among younger women

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[Walker Lyons, MD] So, there has been an increase, which is part of what drove the screening guidelines to change and lower the age. So since around 2015, there's been an increase around 2% per year of women in their 40s developing breast cancer. We don't know exactly what's causing that, but we have a couple of guesses. So, we know that estrogen exposure increases the risk for women for getting breast cancer, and things that increase estrogen exposure include things like obesity, decreased fertility rates, or later age of your first childbirth. So, with those rates of going up in the country, we've obviously seen increased rates of breast cancer overall, but also in women in their 40s. So, what that really means for us is that, you know, we have to see how our screening guidelines work and what we can do for those people to try and catch them at an early stage.