Getting a blood cancer diagnosis is devastating for young people, but it is also far more deadly if the patient is Black, new research shows.
The new study, which looked at outcomes for patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), highlights an urgent need to understand racial and ethnic differences, as well as the inequities in diagnosis, treatment and care between Black and White patients. It was published Tuesday in Blood Advances.
"We found that among young Black and White patients who received similar intensive therapy on clinical trials, outcomes were dramatically inferior for Black patients compared with White patients -- and this disparity occurred predominantly among patients aged 18 to 29 years," said lead author Dr. Karilyn Larkin, a hematologist with Ohio State University's Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine how molecular genetic alterations contribute to outcomes in young Black people with AML compared with their White counterparts," Larkin said in a journal news release.
According to the findings, young Black people with AML were five times more likely to die within 30 days of the start of treatment than their White counterparts and twice as likely to die within five years, even with similar state-of-the-art treatment.