In an age where everything is open 24/7, there’s a growing number of women and men who now work the graveyard shift accommodating the night owls.  It’s no longer limited to nurses and flight attendants! The clerks at Walmart, the 24-hour drive-thru windows and the customer service telephone operators that we call when our computer breaks or our WiFi goes down are working overnight hours as well. What these night workers may not know is that epidemiological research suggests that working the graveyard shift increases their risk for breast cancer. But the big question remains: Why?

Unfortunately, much of the research on breast cancer has been done on rats and mice! There are certainly some important findings that can come from this type of investigation; however, we have yet to hear of a mouse working the night shift. For this we need to study women!  And if we want to understand the connection between working the night shift and breast cancer we need to study women who work the night shift and compare them to women who work days. 

The Army of Women, a program of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation, is currently recruiting for the Shift Work and Breast Cancer Risk Study led by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  The research team is studying breast tissue samples from women who have not had breast cancer, who have worked either day or night shifts for at least five consecutive years to better understand how wake/sleep cycle disruptions may increase breast cancer risk (day-shift-workers could even include stay-at-home-mothers; nurses, police women, firefighters, hotel workers, factory workers and anyone burning the midnight oil qualify as night-shift-workers).  Later, the researchers will compare the samples collected from women who have not had breast cancer to breast tissue samples collected from women with breast cancer.

Learn more and sign up for the Shift Work and Breast Cancer Risk Study. This study is a good example of the kind of research we desperately need! For all the fundraising done, we still don’t know the cause of breast cancer. The vast majority of women who get breast cancer have none of the known risk factors. Obviously we are missing something big! So even if you are not a night shift worker, you should consider signing up for the Army of Women. We need to compare women with breast cancer to those who haven’t been diagnosed! We need to explore the potential environmental links as well as the possibility that a virus could be the cause.

The Army of Women initiative, funded through a grant by the Avon Foundation for Women, was launched as a way to help researchers connect directly with women who are interested in participating in breast cancer research studies. Volunteers sign up and get an email alert every time a new study is seeking volunteers (once or twice a month). You get to decide which one you fit and/or are comfortable participating in. Some studies are as simple as an online questionnaire while others involve giving blood, spit or even tissue samples. And if you don’t fit the study, you can pass it on to everyone you know. The Army of Women has amazed the scientific community by their ability to recruit participants from across the country and world, rapidly saving years of effort and lots of money. 

Join more than 354,000 women (and a few good men) who are willing to go the next step in eradicating breast cancer. Learn more about the Shiftwork and Breast Cancer Risk Study and the Army of Women. The Army of Women needs YOU!

Re-published with permission from the Army of Women.

The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation and the Avon Foundation for Women, a global leader in breast cancer research, joined forces to launch the Love/Avon Army of Women. It is their goal to recruit one million healthy women of every age and ethnicity, including breast cancer survivors and women at high-risk for the disease, to partner with breast cancer researchers and directly participate in the research that will eradicate breast cancer once and for all.

The Army of Women is currently recruiting Black/African American women living in the United States who are newly diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time (stage I, II, or III) to participate in a study. This study will look at why there are differences in breast cancer treatment experiences between Black/African American women and White/European American women in the United States – this study is called “Protocol for Narrowing the Gap in Adjuvant Therapy,” or the Gap Study.

African American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than Caucasian women, even though fewer African American women are getting breast cancer each year and screening use has improved. This difference has gotten worse over the past 20 years. This Gap Study was designed to gather the information needed to better understand the differences in breast cancer treatment experiences between Black/African American Women and White/European American Women. The researchers want to know more about how to improve the survival rates of women with breast cancer.

Participants in the Gap Study will be asked to complete a 30-40 minute telephone survey about your health related experiences and to allow your medical records to be reviewed by the doctor. If you are interested in participating in this study or know someone who might be, please visit the Army of Women website. Or, if you think you might be eligible for other studies, please take a look at other current projects.

The Army of Women is dedicated to representing all women in research so that the research results will apply to all women. They encourage all women to get involved. Breast cancer has been around for decades, but it does not have to be our future. We can be the generation that stops breast cancer once and for all by figuring out what causes this disease and how to prevent it! This is YOUR chance to be part of the research that will end breast cancer.

-Katie Barnett