The article Genetic Risk Facts for Breast Cancer Identified by Ashley P. Taylor , talks about
researchers doing tests to hopefully find different genetic variants that will
better identify women who are at higher risks for getting breast cancer. There
were two studies done on October 23rd , and one of the studies considered
more than 100,000 breast cancer patients and a similar number of cancer-free
controls and found 65 new genetic variants associated with cancer risk. This is
great news! Why? If we can figure out a woman’s cancer risk based on her genome,
they can be separated into different risk levels, which potentially can save
more lives!
This article explains that breast
cancer comes in two categories – ER positive and ER negative. The ER positive
cancers are the much more common ones; therefore, they have the better
prognosis. However, this article does discuss the study that’s Douglas Easton
an epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge in the U.K performed on the ER
negative disease. He explains that in order to actually find the ER negative
hits you have to focus specifically on those ones, and after doing this he
identified 10 new variants that could explain 1.5 percent of the heritable risk
of ER negative breast cancer.
I think this study is amazing and
it is extremely important because breast cancer is such a huge thing in today’s
world and if it can be minimized by studying and researching genomes to
categorize the cancers into different risk, the rates can be dropped
tremendously.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/50696/title/Genetic-Risk-Factors-for-Breast-Cancer-Identified/
http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/diagnosis/hormone_status
Hey Donyhai,
ReplyDeleteI appreciated reading your article because Breast cancer is such a big issue in our generation. If this becomes a common practice, it can bring a tremendous amount of light to such a dark and devastating diagnosis like breast cancer. If a woman knows her cancer risk based on her genetic makeup, she'll be more aware of the symptoms and know to get help right away if something seems suspicious. Today, people don't necessarily look out for warning signs, and if they don't act right away, it may just be "too late."
I think this is a great discovery! Breast cancer is a huge concern, and if woman know their risk factors earlier it can lead to more effective treatments. Also, discovering these 65 genetic variants, actions can be taken to edit the genome to stop their effect.
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