Background:

Symptom burden differences may contribute to racial disparities in breast cancer survival. We compared symptom changes from before to during chemotherapy among women with breast cancer.

Methods:

This observational study followed a cohort of Black and White women diagnosed with Stage I-III, hormone-receptor positive breast cancer from a large cancer center in 2007-2015, and reported symptoms before and during chemotherapy. We identified patients who experienced a one-standard deviation (SD) increase in symptom burden after starting chemotherapy using four validated composite scores (General Physical Symptoms, Treatment Side-Effects, Acute Distress, and Despair). Kitagawa-Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition was used to quantify race differences in symptom changes explained by baseline characteristics (sociodemographic, baseline scores, cancer stage) and first-line chemotherapy regimens.

Results:

Among 1,273 patients, Black women (n=405, 31.8%) were more likely to report one-SD increase in General Physical Symptoms (55.6% vs. 48.2%, p=0.015), Treatment Side-Effects (74.0% vs. 63.4%, p<0.001), and Acute Distress (27.4% vs. 20.0%, p=0.015) than White women. Baseline characteristics and first-line chemotherapy regimens explained a large and significant proportion of the difference in Acute Distress changes (93.7%, p=0.001), but not General Physical Symptoms (25.7%, p=0.25) or Treatment Side-Effects (16.4%, p=0.28).

Conclusions:

Black women with early-stage breast cancer were more likely to experience significant increases in physical and psychological symptom burden during chemotherapy. Most of the difference in physical symptom changes remained unexplained by baseline characteristics, which suggests inadequate symptom management among Black women.

Impact:

Future studies should identify strategies to improve symptom management among Black women and reduce differences in symptom burden.