Be part of a revolution! How can we cure something if we don’t know what we’re curing? Billions of dollars have been spent on breast cancer research to date, but we still don’t know what causes it. Plain and simple, the Army of Women hopes to stop cancer before it starts. By enlisting one million women to participate in breast cancer research, we will be able to finally take the research out of the lab and look at real women. This will enable us to finally find the causes of breast cancer and ultimately figure out how to prevent it. The following study looks at whether breast cancer risk can be accurately assessed from breast milk. If you are a woman who is presently breastfeeding, this study need you.

Project Title The Milk Study

Researcher Kathleen Arcaro, Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Study Summary The purpose of this study is to determine if breast cancer and breast cancer risk can be accurately assessed from a breast milk sample. Currently, there is no accurate way to give women information about their personal risk of developing breast cancer. We will use the cells naturally present in breast milk to examine changes in DNA that occur in association with benign and cancerous breast lesions. Learning about the genetic changes associated with both breast cancer and non-cancerous breast lesions will help us develop a way to provide women with information about their breast cancer risk. Using breast milk to screen for breast cancer will reduce unnecessary biopsies among nursing women.

Who Can Participate? You can join the Milk Study if you are:

• Currently nursing/breast-feeding a baby

and

• You are either going to have a breast biopsy in the near future or you have had a breast biopsy in the past.

What Does Participation Involve? You will be shipped a milk collection container, informed consent form, and questionnaire. You will be asked to complete the consent form and questionnaire and to donate about 2.5 ounces of fresh breast milk from each breast. You will put the consent form, questionnaire, and breast milk in a box that will be picked up by Fed-Ex. You will be asked to provide a copy of the biopsy report. Approximately one year after sending your breast milk sample, the researcher will contact you to ask about any breast problems you may have had in the last year.

Where? Anywhere in the United States

I love studies which are open to anyone in the country who qualifies. If you qualify, please join the Army of Women and sign up for more information on this particular study. If you don’t qualify, be sure to sign up with the AOW anyway.  You never know when the perfect study will need the perfect woman – You!

Survival > Existence,

Debbie