Researchers concluded that the MammaPrint genomic breast cancer test can accurately stratify a woman’s breast cancer risk for up to 25 years after she is first diagnosed with the disease.
U.S. and Dutch researchers, using the longest-term follow-up study of its kind, concluded the 70-gene test has the statistically significant ability to predict whether a newly diagnosed breast cancer patient is at low or high risk of a breast cancer recurrence. Their findings were published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
The study authors looked at two key measures regarding the set of 295 patients who were the subject of an earlier New England Journal of Medicine study: distant metastasis-free survival and overall survival.
The accuracy of results held true for both DMFS and overall survival, regardless of whether patients had node-negative or node-positive cancer. The data was generated from a group of consecutively treated women who were originally diagnosed between 1984 and 1995 and were less than 53 years of age at diagnosis. Median follow-up on these patients was 18.5 years, with a range of 15 to 25 years.
The test is the first FDA-cleared assay of its kind. Developed by Agendia, MammaPrint is used as part of the Symphony test panel, which also includes the BluePrint assay.
Study: Women at Higher Risk of Estrogen Receptor Positive Breast Cancer After Smoking
Young women who smoke and have been smoking a pack a day for a decade or more have a significantly increased risk of developing the most common type of breast cancer, according to an analysis published in the journal Cancer.
Researchers conducted a population-based study consisting of 778 patients with estrogen receptor positive breast cancer and 182 patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Estrogen receptor positive breast cancer is the most common subtype of breast cancer, while triple-negative breast cancer is less common but tends to be more aggressive.
Patients in the study were 20 to 44 years old and were diagnosed from 2004-2010 in the Seattle-Puget Sound metropolitan area. The study also included 938 cancer-free controls.
The researchers found that young women who were current or recent smokers and had been smoking a pack a day for at least 10 years had a 60 percent increased risk of estrogen receptor positive breast cancer. In contrast, smoking was not related to a woman’s risk of triple-negative breast cancer.
NIH Study Confirms Male Risk Factors for Breast Cancer
An NIH study confirmed risk factors for male breast cancer, in one of the largest studies conducted to date on the subject.
The analysis pooled data from studies of about 2,400 men with breast cancer and 52,000 men without breast cancer and confirmed that risk factors for male breast cancer include obesity, a rare genetic condition called Klinefelter syndrome, and gynecomastia. Only about 2,000 new cases of male breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in 2014 in the U.S.
Scientists at NCI addressed this issue by pooling risk factor data from over 21 studies on male breast cancer. The study was published in JNCI.
Researchers observed a small but statistically significantly elevated risk for breast cancer in men with a high body mass index. Men with the highest BMI had a 35 percent greater risk of breast cancer compared to men with the lowest BMI. The elevated risk observed with men who have a high BMI (who often have excess breast tissue and elevated estrogen levels) appears similar to the pattern for breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women.
It was also determined that gynecomastia, independent from both Klinefelter syndrome and obesity, was associated with a 10-fold increased risk of breast cancer in men.
The researchers plan to follow up with a deeper analysis of the effects of naturally occurring hormones on the risk of breast cancer in men by testing hormone levels in biological samples available from some of the studies involved with the project.
