Assessment of risk factors of breast cancer among women in Dodoma, Tanzania: a community-based cross-sectional study.

Assessment of risk factors of breast cancer in the general population provides insightful information towards prevention of breast cancer. This study aimed to assess the risk factors of breast cancer among women in a community from a resource-limited setting in sub-Saharan Africa. This descriptive community-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Dodoma, Tanzania, from July to December 2020. The study included women aged between 18 and 70 years. The data were analyzed using SPSS program version 25.0. Independent -test was used to compare the mean age of the participants for the availability of risk factors of breast cancer. A two-tailed  < 0.05 was considered significant. A total of 354 women were analyzed, and the median age was 27.0 (23.0-35.3) years. Only 11.8% ( = 18) of all the participants did not have any of the risk factors examined. Not engaging in physical activity was the most frequent risk factor which accounted for 68.2% ( = 242) of all the participants. There were more 60.7% ( = 215) of the study participants with a low mean age (22.9 ± 3.5) who had more than 5 risk factors compared to 39.3% ( = 139) of the participants with a high mean age (25.3 ± 9.4) who had more than 5 risk factors, with no statistically significant difference (95% CI = 0.91-2.22,  = 0.31). There is a large proportion of women younger than 40 years in the population of Tanzanian women with many risk factors of breast cancer. This may contribute to the currently observed increase in the incidence of breast cancer in Tanzania for women aged less than 40 years. Therefore, there is an urgency for targeted awareness and screening for breast cancer among younger women in Tanzania so as to increase early detection and diagnosis.