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By Nancy Lapid

May 1 (Reuters) - Hello Health Rounds Readers! It's always nice to have good news to report and today we feature a U.S. study highlighting greatly improving survival rates for young women with breast cancer. We also report on yet another potential medical benefit of popular GLP-1 drugs for diabetes and weight loss.

Survival improving in young U.S. women with breast cancer

Young U.S. women with breast cancer are not dying from the disease as often as a decade ago, researchers reported at the American Association for Cancer Research 2025 meeting in Chicago.

From 2010 to 2020, breast cancer deaths among women ages 20-49 declined significantly across all breast cancer subtypes and racial and ethnic groups, with marked declines starting after 2016, according to an analysis of data from the national Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results registry.

Overall, the breast cancer death rate in this age group fell from 9.70 per 100,000 women in 2010 to 1.47/100,000 in 2020.

The decline was sharper after 2016, likely due to advancements in treatment options, greater uptake of precision medicine, and expanded access to care and screening in women ages 40-49, study leader Adetunji Toriola of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis said in a statement.

While breast cancer mortality declined in every racial and ethnic group, non-Hispanic Black women had the highest rate in both 2010 (16.56/100,000) and 2020 (3.41/100,000).

Non-Hispanic white women had the lowest rates in 2010 (9.18/100,000) and 2020 (1.16/100,000).

“We have made tremendous advances in reducing mortality from breast cancer in young women but there are still opportunities for improvements, especially in relation to eliminating disparities,” Toriola said.

“We must continue to perform impactful research to ensure further reduction in breast cancer mortality, including research into understanding the tumor biology and molecular mechanisms driving carcinogenesis and treatment response in younger women.”

GLP-1 drugs may curb atrial fibrillation

GLP-1 drugs that are used to treat diabetes and have become wildly popular for weight loss, may also be useful for controlling the common heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation, researchers reported at the Heart Rhythm 2025 meeting in San Diego.

Researchers looked at more than 2,500 patients with type 2 diabetes, atrial fibrillation and obesity at 170 U.S. Veterans Affairs medical centers.

Those who were receiving a GLP-1 drug experienced a 13% reduction in major AF-related events during a median follow-up of three years, compared to patients receiving other medications for their diabetes.

AF-related events included hospitalizations for the disorder, need for electroshock therapy to reset the heart rhythm, and ablation procedures to heat heart tissue in order to create scars that interrupt the electrical signals causing the arrhythmia.

Researchers did not identify the drugs being taken but common examples of GLP-1 medicines for diabetes include Novo Nordisk's NOVOb.CO Ozempic, Rybelsus and Victoza, and Eli Lilly's LLY.N Mounjaro and Trulicity.

Because patients were taking low doses of GLP-1 drugs, rather than higher doses used for weight loss, the results suggest the arrhythmia benefits are independent of any weight-loss benefit, the researchers noted.

The study was not designed to prove the GLP-1 drugs caused the reduction in AF events.

But study leader Dr. Varun Sundaram of the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University said, "given the growing obesity epidemic and the rising prevalence of atrial fibrillation," it lays the foundation for a new approach to treating AF if larger trials confirm the potential benefits.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Bill Berkrot)

((Nancy.Lapid@thomsonreuters.com))