Breast cancer patients living alone less likely to beat disease

SOCIALLY isolated women are far less likely to survive breast cancer, researchers have found.

Patients who live on their own and do not have a strong support network have a 60 per cent higher chance of dying from the disease within ten years of diagnosis, according to a study.

And even if their initial treatment is successful, isolated women are 40 per cent more likely to have a recurrence of the cancer.

The study, based on the health records of nearly 9,300 breast cancer patients in the US, suggests women who have close relatives or friends to care for them fare better.

The academics, from the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, California, found isolated women were less likely to seek the best treatments and tended to have unhealthier lifestyles.

Writing in the medical journal Cancer, they said: ‘Socially isolated women were more likely to have lower levels of physical activity, be current smokers, drink more than recommended, and be obese. Social isolation was associated with a lower likelihood of receiving chemotherapy or hormonal therapy.’

The team found the nature and benefit of different types of family support networks differed by age and racial group.

Being married, for example, was linked to better survival for white women, particularly those who were older. But among non-white women, having strong ties to large extended families and groups of friends had a stronger impact.

The researchers suggested this was because white women tended to have ‘diminished strength of ties’ with relatives other than their spouse, as they were ‘more likely to move away from extended families than women of other racial/ethnic groups’. Study leader Dr Candyce Kroenke said: ‘It is well established that larger social networks predict lower overall mortality in healthy populations and in breast cancer patients, but associations with breast cancer-specific outcomes like recurrence and breast cancer mortality have been mixed.

‘These findings, from a large pooled cohort of nearly 10,000 women with breast cancer, confirm the generally beneficial influence of women’s social ties on breast cancer recurrence and mortality; however, they also point to complexity, that not all social ties are beneficial, and not in all women.’

Dr Richard Berks, of the UKbased charity Breast Cancer Now, said: ‘It’s vital that we uncover all the factors affecting a patient’s chances of surviving breast cancer. Treatments are of course absolutely fundamental, but other aspects of people’s lives – such as their social ties and support networks – can have an effect on their survival too.

‘Further research is now needed to understand why loneliness might affect patients’ outcomes, and to help us address these issues so that everyone is given the best possible chance of survival.’

Previous research, from Aston Medical School in Birmingham and the University of East Anglia, suggested married people were 14 per cent less likely to die after a heart attack than those who were single.