Breast cancer patients with the BRCA mutation and an increased risk of relapse can be identified by testing for other genetic variants, a European conference will hear today.
Techniques already exist to test for low risk genetic variants linked to breast cancer. They can be used effectively to highlight relapse risk for BRCA mutation carriers, say Dr Alexandra van den Broek from the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and her team.
The research was being presented today (21 March) at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
An analysis of about 6,000 breast cancer patients was able to separate out which women with BRCA-related breast cancer have the lowest rate of recurrences and which women have the highest.
This could improve treatment decisions, they believe.
Dr van den Broek said: "Women with a BRCA mutation are more likely to develop breast cancer when they are young and, unfortunately, some will be unlucky and go on to suffer a second breast cancer later in life. We know these women are at a higher risk, but it has also been shown that individual risks may vary widely, so we wanted to see if there was any way to better identify patients at lower and higher risks.
"These polygenic risk scores were originally developed to try to better predict the risk of developing a first breast cancer. Our research suggests that they can also be used to help patients who have survived their first breast cancer to better understand their level of risk for a second breast cancer.
“We hope these findings will add to the existing knowledge about predicting risk for a second breast cancer in these survivors."
Abstract no: 7, The association between Polygenic Risk Scores and contralateral breast cancer risk in BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers: analyses in the CIMBA consortium, was presented on 21 March at the Clinical Science Symposium: Risk Modelling session, of the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference in Barcelona, Spain.
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