Breast Cancer and Bone Metastasis

Cancer that has grown in one part of the body could extend outside that place and attack other areas of the body. This process is named metastasis. The bone is a usual place of metastasis for some different cancers. They consist of lung, breast, prostate, kidney, and thyroid cancers, and multiple myeloma amongst others.
When cancer has extended to a new site, it is still named after the area of the body where it begins. For instance, if prostate cancer extends to the bones, it is still called prostate cancer, and if breast cancer extends to the lungs it is still breast cancer. A person with breast cancer that has extended to the bones is said to have breast cancer with bone metastases. (If you are talking about over one metastasis, they are named metastases.)

Bone comes about to be one of the most common parts to which breast cancer metastasizes, the others being liver, lung, and brain.

Breast cancer is the most widespread type of malignant disease among women; one in every ten women in the United States will experience from this disease. It stands for the second principal cause of death by a malignant disease in women following lung cancer. Bone metastases in breast cancer are common. The risk of developing bone metastasis augments with the stage of the disease at presentation. Autopsy studies have showed a high amount of breast cancer patients with bone metastasis.

Breast cancer usually extends to bone at a frequency of about 70% in patients having distant metastasis. But, the mechanism of bone metastasis is not well comprehended. One probability is that the environment in bone marrow, exceedingly rich in growth factors and cytokines, is appropriate for the proliferation of breast cancer cells. A more probable elucidation is that definite mechanisms of adhesion happen between the bone endothelial (blood vessel lining) cells and breast cancer cells that favors extend to this location.

Bone metastases represent 25% of all metastatic breast cancers. There are two major kinds of bone cancer: osteolytic and osteoblastic. Osteolytic cancer eats away at your bones, causing holes to form. This leaves bones open to breaks and fractures. Osteoblastic cancer augments the density of your bones, but makes them prone to fracture as well. Both forms of bone cancer lead to pain.