Is breast cancer hereditary?
Family history isn’t such an important factor after all when it comes to breast cancer. You’re as likely to survive it as women who have no cancer in their family, new research suggests.
Hereditary factors are reckoned to be responsible for a quarter of all cases of breast cancer – but they don’t make any difference to the prognosis, say researchers from the University of Southampton.
Research conclusion
Women with a family history have the same chances of surviving the disease as those who don’t, a study of 2,850 breast cancer patients discovered. The women were all under the age of 41, and some had a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. But there was no difference in the rate of cancer recurrence after treatment, said lead researcher Prof Diana Eccles.
Source – British Journal of Surgery, 2015