Breast cancer during pregnancy and lactation in Zaria, Nigeria.

As most African women with breast cancer are premenopausal, the probability of pregnancy and lactation co-existing with breast cancer is higher than among the Caucasian patients who are usually post-menopausal. However, because of the relative rarity of breast cancer in black women compared with the Caucasians, experience with gestational breast cancer in African women is very limited. Among 95 women younger than 50 years of age who had the diagnosis of breast cancer over a 12 1/2 year period in Zaria, 25 (26.3%) were either pregnant (n = 14) or lactating (n = 11) at the time of presentation. Comparison of the clinical feature of these 25 with those of the remaining 70 who were neither pregnant nor lactating showed no difference in the clinical presentation, histological tumour type, and the advanced stages of the breast cancer at presentation between the two groups.