of MD Anderson think differently:
from their article--
HER-2 Positivity Rates
The frequency of HER-2 positivity in all of the studies pre-
sented in Table 1 was 22.2%, with a range of 9%–74%. The
HER-2–positive rate was similar for IHC, at 22% (range,
10%–74%), and FISH, at 23.9% (range, 14.7%– 68%). In
current practice, HER-2–positive rates have trended below
20%, with most investigators currently reporting that the
true positive rate is in the range of 15%–20%. The HER-2–
positive rate may be higher when metastatic lesions are
tested, and tertiary hospitals and cancer centers report
slightly higher rates than community hospitals and national
reference laboratories.
reference:
www.TheOncologist.com
The HER-2 Receptor and Breast Cancer: Ten Years of Targeted
Anti–HER-2 Therapy and Personalized Medicine
JEFFREY S. ROSS,a ELZBIETA A. SLODKOWSKA,a W. FRASER SYMMANS,b LAJOS PUSZTAI,b
PETER M. RAVDIN,b GABRIEL N. HORTOBAGYI,
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Albany Medical College, Albany, New York, USA;
Departments of Pathology, Breast Medical Oncology, and Biostatistics and Quantitative Sciences, The
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA
The Hawaii study was relatively small, but about as ethnically mixed as you can get!
The Swedish study included 5 043 patients and in several parts of southern Sweden over 70% of the population comes
from other countries including a large contingent from the Middle East and Africa. Sweden is no longer as ethnically homogenous as it used to be!
From Wikipedia--
From the late 1940s and until 1973 work-force immigration dominated, peaking in the late 1960s. Finns make up about 5% of the whole population. The occupant population of northern Sweden, the Sami people, (a ethnic group living in 4 countries) is only about 20,000 persons.
The largest immigrant groups in Sweden are Finns, Assyrians/Syriacs, Russians from the former USSR (including Ukrainians and Russian Jews), Turks from Turkey and Cyprus, Greeks from Greece and Cyprus, Albanians from Albania and the Republic of Macedonia, and South Slavic peoples from the former Yugoslavia (namely Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) representing both work-force immigration and war refugees.
Migration triggered by political crises and economic disparities in the second half of the 20th century include refugee groups of Assyrians/Syriacs from Syria, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq; Persians; Kurds from Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey; Palestinians; Koreans from South Korea and Manchuria, China; Filipinos; Vietnamese; Argentinans; Baluchis from Pakistan; Moroccans; Spaniards; Sicilians from Italy; Hungarians; and Chileans.
Sweden has taken in refugees from various countries fleeing persecution, including people from the former East Germany, Poland, Iran, Myanmar, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Guatemala; and more recently from conflict-zones in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Somalia.
In fact, Sweden has a history of providing refuge to asylum seekers. On a smaller scale, it took in political refugees from Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia after their countries were invaded by the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1968 respectively. Some tens of thousands of American draft dodgers from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970's also found refuge in Sweden.
Today, Sweden has one of the largest exile communities of Assyrians/Syriacs.
A sizable community from the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) arrived during the Second World War.[6]