Sisters Unite

May 2006 Special Advertising Section

When Carol Meyers got a tearful call from her younger sister in 1997, the two siblings were only a few states away, but the distance felt insurmountable. Learning that her sister had breast cancer, Meyers knew there was only so much she could do to help her sister in the fight against the disease.

“She’s in Ohio and I’m in Wisconsin, and I felt so helpless,” Meyers says. “Even if we lived close together, though, I would still have that sense of not being to do anything, of not helping her as much as I wanted.”

Last year, however, Meyers got the chance to help her sister in a different way, when she began to participate in the c, a research study being conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health. The study is examining the genetic and environmental links between women who have had breast cancer and their sisters.

So far, more than 25,000 women have signed up since the project’s launch in 2004, in what has become the only long-term study of women aged thirty-five to seventy-four whose sisters have or had breast cancer. Within the next three years, researchers hope to have at least 50,000 participants nationwide.

The study is fairly straightforward, asking participants to fill out an extensive questionnaire about their childhoods, product use, family health history, and diet. Female examiners connected with the study visit participants in their homes and draw blood and urine samples, and collect house dust and even toenail clippings.

Although the results of the study won’t be fully known until it’s completed in ten years, researchers expect to have at least some answers by the end of 2007. The study is designed to help researchers understand how women’s genes, as well as environmental factors, might influence the risk of breast cancer. “We hope to find ways to prevent women in future generations from getting breast cancer,” says Paula Juras, MD, the NIEHS project officer for the Sister Study. “If we can identify things in the environment that affect how the body clears toxins or absorbs nutrients, for example, we have a much better chance of lowering the incidence of this type of cancer.”

For the women in the study, their participation has particularly strong significance. Women like Meyers feel they’re able to make a difference through their involvement, and perhaps help prevent breast cancer in their daughters and granddaughters. “In a way, I feel as though all women are my sisters,” she says. “I’m doing this for all of us.”