Released in January, the American Cancer Society’s 2025 Cancer Statistics report estimates the number of new cancer cases and deaths in the United States and compiles the most recent data on population-based cancer occurrence and outcomes.
While the 2025 reports contains a lot of good news — declining mortality across all cancer types, steep declines in incidence among older men for smoking-related cancers and prostate cancer — there are concerning statistics as well, particularly when it comes to cancer in young women. The report found that overall cancer incidence has increased in younger women, who now have an 82% higher incidence rate than their male counterparts.
The change is driven in large part by an increase in breast cancer in women under 50, a statistic that University of Colorado Cancer Center member Virginia Borges, MD, knows well. Borges, director of the Young Women’s Breast Cancer Translational Program at the CU Cancer Center, has seen increased rates of breast cancer in young women over the past several years.
We asked Borges about the phenomenon and what younger women need to know about their breast cancer risk.