Breast cancer families may not risk ovarian cancer too

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

In women who do not carry a specific breast cancer gene, the risk of ovarian cancer is not raised, even if there is a family history of breast cancer.
We already know that the two genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 increase the risk of both breast and ovarian cancer. There are also women who come from a family with breast cancer but do not have either of these genes. What is their risk of ovarian cancer?

To answer this question, researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center looked at 199 families with multiple cases of breast cancer who did not have any BRCA mutations. There were 19 new cases of breast cancer during follow up which shows an increased risk. But there was only one case of ovarian cancer, which shows the risk for these women is actually no higher than for the general population. The search is now on to identify genes other than the BRCA genes which are responsible for hereditary breast cancer.

Source
Journal of the National Cancer Institute 21st September 2005

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