SALON

Friday, Jul 13, 2007 3:00 PM UTC

Genetic mutations may not mean deadlier cancer

Promising news for women with BRCA mutations.

By

Topics: Cancer, Broadsheet, Breast cancer, Health, Love and Sex,

To cut, or not to cut? Women at high risk for developing breast cancer often struggle with their options, particularly with the choice of whether or not to undergo prophylactic mastectomy. And justifiably so: Removing your breasts to cut your cancer risk can seem awfully drastic, especially considering that many high-risk women will never develop breast cancer, that even after mastectomy the risk of developing breast cancer isn’t nil, and that surgery carries its own risks. And there are certainly other prevention options, from stepping up screening to taking chemopreventive drugs like tamoxifen. On the other hand, preventive mastectomy does dramatically improve one’s odds. For women with the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genetic mutations — who tend to get a more aggressive form of the disease and who have a 55 to 70 percent chance of developing breast cancer by age 70 — double mastectomy can lower their risk by as much as 90 percent. But attractive numbers don’t make mastectomy right for everyone, or an easy choice for those women who do opt for surgery.

Here to complicate the picture is some good, surprising news from the New England Journal of Medicine: A long-term study by researchers from Israel’s National Cancer Control Center found that among breast cancer sufferers, carriers of BRCA mutations have similar 10-year survival rates to non-carriers. In other words, BRCA carriers are more likely to develop breast cancer, but carriers with cancer aren’t more likely to die of the disease.

As the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, “The finding is somewhat of a surprise, as carriers of the mutant genes tend to develop a more virulent form of the disease that strikes before age 50, and can be resistant to certain types of treatments.” And it’s worth noting, as Reuters does, that researchers observed “a slight difference in the death rate five years after diagnosis, and the tumors among women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 tended to be more aggressive. Of the noncarriers who died from breast cancer, 68 died within five years, versus 88 percent for women with BRCA1 and 77 percent for BRCA2 mutations.” Overall, though, the National Cancer Institute’s Patricia Hartge, who wrote a NEJM editorial to accompany the study report, called the findings “generally reassuring” for carriers of BRCA mutations.

Hartge did flag what she called “a disturbing footnote” in the study results, though: A small number of subjects died within 10 years of their diagnosis even though their tumors were small and their lymph nodes were unaffected. This strange stat contradicts what we think of as the typical cancer progression — and serves as a reminder that when it comes to breast cancer, there’s still much we don’t know.

Page Rockwell is Salon's editorial project manager. More Page Rockwell.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 2 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations