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How age affects a woman’s risk for breast cancer
10072018 MAMMOGRAM TNS
Blanca Rubio performs a mammogram on a 65-year-old patient at Evanston Hospital in Evanston, Illinois. The risk of breast cancer can increase with age. (Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune/MCT)
The risk of developing breast cancer increases as women age, but the largest increase in risk happens when a woman enters her 60s. Fewer than 1 percent of women develop breast cancer in their 30s. That number becomes 3.56 percent for women in their 60s and 3.82 percent for women in their 70s, according to the National Cancer Institute.