Scientists devise method using genetic data and lifestyle to work out who should be screened.
Women may be able to go to their GP to find out their risk of getting breast cancer and choose whether or not to be screened, if a new online calculator devised by scientists is successful.
Many lifestyle risk factors for breast cancer are known, but each one individually often does not add up to much. The cumulative effect, however, may be much more significant. The same applies to genes. Two inherited faulty genes – BRCA1 and BRCA2 – give women a 50% chance of breast cancer. But there are many other genes that are now thought to play a small part. The researchers, for their risk assessment, have taken into account 300 different genes that could be identified.
“This is the first time that anyone has combined so many elements into one breast cancer prediction tool,” -Prof Antonis Antoniou, lead author of the research at the University of Cambridge.
Prof Antoniou added: “It could be a game changer for breast cancer because now we can identify large numbers of women with different levels of risk – not just women who are at high risk.
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