Symptom burden differences may contribute to racial disparities in breast cancer outcomes. In this retrospective cohort study of 1,273 women with early-stage hormone receptor-positive breast cancer from a large cancer center, Black women more frequently experienced worsening physical and psychological symptoms during chemotherapy compared to White women. Hu and colleagues found that differences in baseline sociodemographic and clinical characteristics contributed to the increasing symptom burden among Black patients. However, most of the differences in the physical symptom changes were not explained by these characteristics, which suggests inadequate symptom management among Black women. More research is needed to ensure equitable symptom management among all patients.
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Shreves and colleagues investigated spatial patterns in smoking prevalence and lung cancer mortality rates by sex. They report the first observation of a significant cluster of counties where the relationship between smoking prevalence...