Tuesday, July 17, 2007

The Sister Study

Women play many important roles throughout their lives—daughter, mother, and friend—but no relationship is as unique as the one between two sisters. Sister Study researchers hope the sisters of women with breast cancer can play another important role by helping discover how our environment and genes affect our chances of developing breast cancer.

It is still not known if breast cancer is caused by something women come in contact with at work, at home, in their communities or in the personal products they use. That’s precisely what the Sister Study is trying to answer. The Sister Study needs 50,000 women whose sisters had breast cancer to enroll now in order to help discover the environmental and genetic causes of breast cancer. Conducted by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Sister Study is committed to enrolling a diverse population of women to ensure the results represent and benefit all women.

I don't have any sisters, but for those breast cancer survivors who do, please urge your sister(s) to participate in this important study. Women of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds are needed to obtain as much real-life, useful information as possible for as many people as possible.

For more information visit www.sisterstudy.org or www.estudiodehermanas.org. Call toll-free 1-877-4SISTER. Deaf/Hard of Hearing call 1-866-TTY-4SIS.

Diana Dyer, MS, RD

No comments: