Younger Women With Hereditary Breast Cancer Risk Tumor in Other Breast

The chance could be six times higher than normal, study suggests

By Kathleen Doheny
HealthDay Reporter

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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Younger women with non-BRCA hereditary breast cancer are up to six times more likely to develop a new cancer in the other breast in the next 20 years, when compared with the general population, a new Swedish study finds.

"We did not expect this high rate of new tumors in the contralateral breast," said study co-author Dr. Henrik Gronberg, a professor of cancer epidemiology and biostatistics at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

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His team reviewed data from 120 families and 204 women with breast cancer and a family history of breast cancer, but not of the type caused by mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, also known to boost breast cancer risk.

Overall, the probability of these women getting cancer in the other breast was 5.5 percent at five years and up to 27.3 percent at 20 years -- about six times the expected risk at 20 years. In comparison, the general population's risk of getting a primary breast cancer was figured at 1.9 percent at five years and 4.9 percent at 20 years, the researchers said.

When they analyzed risk by age group, the scientists found that the 15-year likelihood of developing cancer in the other breast was much higher for women under 50 than for those over 50. Forty percent of those under 50 had a probability of developing cancer in the other breast at 15 years after the original cancer diagnosis, compared to 10 percent in those over 50.

The risk is similar to the estimated risk among BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, Gronberg said.

The study findings appear in the March 15 issue of Cancer.

In previous research, other investigators had found that breast-cancer survivors are 25 percent more likely to develop cancer in another part of their body than those without a cancer history.

And it's well known that women with mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have a higher risk of breast cancer. In 2004, researchers reported that BRCA1 and 2 gene-mutation carriers are also more likely to get breast cancer in the opposite breast. The researchers found that more than 37 percent of the 87 women studied who were known to carry a BRCA gene mutation and who had a lumpectomy for breast cancer developed a new cancer in the untreated breast within 10 years of the original diagnosis. That report also appeared in Cancer.

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