Breast cancer is the second most common type of cancer among Brazilian women and the most deadly. In 2025, 18,000 women will die of the disease. The incidence rate has remained stable this century, but the death rate has continuously risen. Mortality is increasing fastest among women up to 40 years of age, at almost 2% per year. This age group accounts for the majority of aggressive cases, which are difficult to diagnose because younger people have denser breasts and are not offered routine screening.
A pilot active-screening program initiated in the city of Mococa, São Paulo, aims to identify residents in this age group at greatest risk of breast and cervical cancer—which also has a rising mortality rate, even though many cases are preventable with the HPV vaccine. Biomedical Sciences editor Ricardo Zorzetto takes a closer look at the research shining a light on this concerning situation.
To offer some relief, the report brings some good news. Soft drink consumption in Brazil fell by 33% between 2010 and 2021. A major factor in metabolic and cardiovascular disease, consumption of these ultra-processed beverages remains high: Brazilians drink an average of almost 60 liters per year, putting them in 34th position worldwide.
Veridiana Scarpelli
Although not planned, some issues of Pesquisa FAPESP have an almost thematic character. The life of public health specialist Geraldo de Paula Souza is notable for the diversity of his work. One of the founders of the WHO, he established the first health centers in Brazil in the 1930s, with a vision of preventive medicine and community health that characterizes the public system to this day. He carried out experiments to assess the water quality in São Paulo and developed a water purification device.
Pesquisa FAPESP editor Carlos Henrique Fioravanti, an expert in unearthing topics for the Retrospect section (including Paula Souza), recently recovered an email from 2015 inviting the team to a meeting with then scientific coordinator, Luiz Henrique Lopes dos Santos. It was there that I was introduced to the editorial team of this unique publication. Having been at the company for over 20 years, the managing editor, Neldson Marcolin, usually tells newcomers that it takes at least a year to understand the magazine—its editorial objective, content production methodology, the process for checking information accuracy, and the balance of topics, languages, and audiences. Without the benefit of the conceptual clarity provided by LH, as we call him, my adaptation would have been far more difficult. This quality, honed by a life dedicated to the study of logic, is apparent in the interview he gave to editors Ana Paula Orlandi and Fabrício Marques.
In April, we produced a special English print edition of Pesquisa FAPESP, something we do twice a year, containing a collection of reports published online in the previous six months. And to mark the Brazil-France Cultural Year, an initiative in which FAPESP will participate in June, we have created new content on research and collaboration between the two countries to be published in a special edition partly in French. Reversing the usual route, this material came from an interview with the French-Guianan economist Christiane Taubira, a former Minister of Justice of France who now holds the José Bonifácio Professorship at USP. In her 19 years as a politician, she was the target of racist insults during debates, to which she responded with poetry. “Every time I was in a confrontation, in the most sensitive moments, verses came to me as arguments.”
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