A genetic mutation common in Ashkenazi Jewish breast cancer
patients has also been found to be prevalent in Hispanic and young
African-American women with breast cancer, according to a new
study.
The findings will help physicians identify more women at high
risk for getting breast cancer and send them for screening and
counseling, the authors say in the Journal of the American Medical
Association (JAMA).
The genetic anomaly - called the BRCA1 mutation - is found in
8.3 percent of the Ashkenazi women with cancer, the highest rate,
the authors report.
Hispanic women with breast cancer were the second most likely to
have the mutation, at 3.5 percent. Non-Hispanic whites with breast
cancer had a 2.2 percent rate, and Asian-American women had 0.5
percent.
However, while African-American women of all ages had a 1.3
percent likelihood of having the mutation, black breast cancer
patients younger than 35 had a 16.7 percent mutation rate.
The researchers say the study was one of the largest,
multi-racial studies of the mutation to date. It included 3,181
breast cancer patients in northern California.
"Traditionally, studies have focused on white women," says lead
author Esther John. "There is a great need to study racial
minorities in the United States."
The BRCA1 gene normally helps cells repair DNA. But women who
inherit the mutation are less able to make the repairs, and have a
65 percent risk of developing breast cancer and 39 percent risk of
ovarian cancer.
In the general population, the risk of a woman developing breast
cancer is about one in eight - or 12.5 percent - over a
lifetime.
The findings about young black women with breast cancer was a
"surprise", although it is consistent with a pattern that breast
cancer is especially aggressive in young African-American women,
the authors say.
"The message is that these minority breast cancer patients may
need screening in ways that we hadn't appreciated before," senior
author Alice Whittemore says.
(China Daily via DPA January 1, 2008)