Preliminary Results

The Outliers study staff are thankful to participants in our study. Your willingness to participate will allow us to uncover the secrets to long-term survival. In the future, we hope to use this information to help other women and men live long and well with metastatic breast cancer.

As shown in the at right, 720 participants have completed the outliers survey with the greatest numbers from the U.S., particularly New York, Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, and California. We have also had a number of international participants from Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and Israel.

Below are images and descriptions of preliminary results we’ve received from the hundreds of participants who have be enrolled on this study. If you have any questions regarding the results below, please email outliers@medicine.wisc.edu.

Site of Metastatic Cancer
Number of Participants in Graph = 711

Among 711 participants, the most common site of metastasis was bone, followed by liver, lung, and lymph node. Some subjects reported no evidence of disease (NED). The sum of the bars exceeds the number of respondents as many individuals reported multiple metastatic sites.

Type of Breast Cancer
Number of Participants in Graph = 647

Among participants, most breast cancers were hormone receptor (HR) positive and HER2 negative, although some had other types as shown. HR positive is defined as reported positive for estrogen receptor or progesterone receptor.

Below is a breast cancer timeline for 766 participants. The peach colored bar shows the time from original breast cancer diagnosis, and cyan colored bar is time of metastatic breast cancer. As you can see, about 100 participants were originally diagnosed with breast cancer before 2000, and many have lived 10 years or more with metastatic breast cancer to date.

Timeline of Diagnosis for Each Participant
Number of Participants in Graph = 766

Exercise Habit Reporting

Survey participants reported weekly exercise habits, which were converted into a standardized unit (MET hours per week). Below are four graphs illustrating the data between reported exercise among subjects. Click on each graph for an expanded view.

Exercise vs. Time Living 1

Exercise vs. Time Living 2

Exercise Distributions by Survival

Exercise Behaviors

Thank you to our students!

The Outliers project staff would like to recognize two University of Wisconsin undergraduate students who programmed software to generate graphical representations of data collected in the survey.

Hengjiali Xu
Majoring in Mathematics and Statistics

Grace Joyce
Majoring in Neurobiology with a Certificate in Computer Science