I hope you heard the news that our Army of Women now has a more inclusive name: Love Research Army. The Army’s goals haven’t changed. But the new name is part of our broader effort to push researchers toward more inclusive research eligibility requirements that will open their studies to transgender women and men and nonbinary people.
The new guidelines from ASCO on male breast cancer show why including men in breast cancer research is so important: there are far too many unknowns. Each year, about 2,670 men in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer. But only recently have researchers begun to look more closely at the specific biological and environmental factors that increase risk for male breast cancer and the best ways to treat it. This would not have happened without strong voices like the Male Breast Cancer Coalition and their allies!
The new guidelines from ASCO will help men diagnosed with breast cancer receive better care. And although they have been a long time coming, they are only the beginning. We still don’t know, for example, how men should be monitored after they complete breast cancer treatment. This is a question we could answer if we included more men in breast cancer research.
To help answer some of these questions, we will be including men and transgender people in our new study that will further our understanding of the anatomy of the breast ducts. We will be sending out more information about this research soon. We hope you will forward it on to everyone so that we can be sure the findings from this study will help people of all genders!
