A new study released by 12 leading US centers for hereditary cancer will aid in establishing a reformed set of guidelines that state which female patients should be tested for breast and ovarian cancer, based on family history of the disease.
The 238 women participants had been already diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer, and had at least one close female relative with the either breast or ovarian cancer. Fourty percent of these women had abnormal BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, mutations that are strongly linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancers.
