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Breast Cancer

Braest cancer, hereditary or not?

09/06/2000 09:47AM

Question:

Is breast cancer a hereditary disease?

Answer:

In the United States, approximately 180,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. Of these cases, an estimated 7% of breast cancer is thought to be due to the presence of two breast cancer susceptibility genes: BRCA1 and BRCA2. The men and women who have inherited the mutated genes have a 50% higher risk(some researchers say 85%) of developing breast cancer in their life time. There are other inherited genes that are known to predispose to breast cancer but these mutated genes are very rare. I hope it is clear that only a small fraction of cases are due to the inherited genetic predisposition of an alteration in a single gene. Thank you for your question.

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Response by:

University of Cincinnati Janet Trigg, RN, MSN, EdD
Associate Professor, Emeritus
College of Nursing
University of Cincinnati
Janet   Trigg, RN, MSN, EdD