Breast cancer survival may not have as much to do with your genes as scientists like to tell us. Women with mutations in genes known as BRCA 1 and 2 were thought to have the more deadly version of breast cancer – but new research suggests this is not so.
A research team in Israel reviewed the records of women who had breast cancer in the 1980s, before testing for the genetic mutations was routine.
They found that women who had the mutation lived just as long after diagnosis as women who had a ‘healthy’ genetic profile. And there was little difference between the two groups when researchers analysed deaths from breast cancer.
(Source: New England Journal of Medicine, 2007; 357: 115-23).
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