Falsifying the common belief that breast cancer could not affect men, an expert at the Breast Cancer Foundation has claimed that males and females were equally vulnerable to the fatal disease even though the detection was comparatively less among the former.

According to the expert, Marli Gregory, who is an advisor to the Breast Cancer Foundation, "For a lot of them (men affected with the disease) it's getting a 'girl's cancer' -- this is something that men don't get".

Speaking with the Breakfast, Dr. Gregory stated that men, too, had breast tissues behind the nipple, though in a far lesser quantity as compared to their female counterparts. Also, in men the tissue was quite less developed in comparison to women.

Regarding how many men were affected with the disease, she said about 1% (10-20) of the total cases detected were those of men every year. And the detection was more scarring for men, the disease being rarer in them, she added.

Meanwhile, Prof. Ehtesham Abdi, the Principal Investigator of the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study (IBIS-II), has urged `Tweed' women with a family history of breast cancer to come forward for a research. The study would be conducted at over two-dozen hospitals across Australia and New Zealand, including at The Tweed Hospital.