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Dispelling the Myths Behind Breast Cancer and Family
Oct. 25, 2001 -- Knowing your personal risk of breast cancer is important. And a new study goes a long way toward boosting our understanding. It shows that your family history of the disease may not play as large a role as you'd suspect in determining your risk, and it dispels some commonly-held misconceptions about families, genetics, and breast cancer.
The Oxford (England) University researchers confirmed that first, not having a family member with breast cancer does not mean you're safe. Actually, most women who develop the disease are the first in their family to have it. Second, while those who do have a family history of breast cancer are at somewhat increased risk, they are not more likely to develop the disease at an early age.
"Eight of nine women who develop breast cancer do not have an affected mother, sister, or daughter. Although women who have a family history of breast cancer are at increased risk of the disease, most will never develop breast cancer, and those who do will be over 50 when their cancer is diagnosed," according to the researchers.
The study is published in the Oct. 27 issue of the medical journal The Lancet.
Previous studies have looked at this issue but have not included enough women to accurately identify the risk of breast cancer in a woman who already has a family member with the disease.
By combining the results of 52 previous studies, looking at more than 58,000 women with breast cancer and 101,000 women without breast cancer, researchers were now able to identify the degree to which family history dictates risk.
Overall, they found, your risk of getting breast cancer increases with each additional first-degree relative (mother, sister, daughter) who has the disease. Specifically, eight of 100 women with one first-degree relative, 13 out of 100 women with two first-degree relatives, and 21 out of 100 women with three first-degree relatives with breast cancer would also develop the disease before age 80.
But few women younger than 50 developed breast cancer, even when they had two first-degree relatives with the disease -- just 8 out of 100.
This heap of statistics tells us that yes, women with mothers, daughters, or sisters who have breast cancer are indeed more likely to get the disease. But it also shows us that the risk is lower than we might have thought, and relatively few women under the age of 50 develop breast cancer.
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