Breast cancer is in the headlines today, focusing on new changes to the popular National Cancer Institute online breast cancer risk assessment tool to better estimate risk for Black women.

The NCI calculator uses such factors as current age, age when first child was born, and family history of breast cancer to estimate the likelihood of having breast cancer in the next five years.

Here's a snippet from the NYT's AP article on the risk calculator:

"The original calculator had been slightly underestimating risk for black women age 45 and older and slightly overestimating risk for younger black women, cancer institute researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

"The tool was created using studies of breast cancer in white women, and it warned nonwhite women that the answer came with some uncertainty.

"Now scientists are updating the calculations to reflect newer data on black women and cancer."

And, here's the link to today's Washington Post article on the NCI breast cancer risk assessment tool:

Breast Cancer Risk Underestimated for Blacks, Study Says

By Rob Stein Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 28, 2007; Page A01

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."