Genetic mutations increase risk of breast cancer by 80%: Experts

According to statistics released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in December 2020 and cited by the World Health Organization (WHO), breast cancer has now surpassed lung cancer as the world’s most commonly diagnosed cancer.

The subject experts suggested that to a large extent, the disease is hereditary in nature. The experts said that inheritance, either by disease history in family or by genetic changes, augments the probability of developing cancer.

   

According to them, highly predisposed to developing breast and ovarian cancer are those whose family has a history of breast cancer or found inheriting a separate set of genes.

Speaking to IANS on World Cancer Day on Thursday, Pragya Shukla, Head of Department, Clinical Oncology, at the Delhi State Cancer Institute, said that offsprings of a cancer survivor are also more susceptible to developing breast or ovarian cancer.

“A woman is more prone to develop breast or ovarian cancer if either her mother is a cancer survivor or any of her immediate family members has a history of this disease,” she said.

M.D. Ray, Additional Professor, Surgical Oncology, at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), also said that breast cancer can be inherited if a woman has a close family member who had developed the disease.

However, the family history is majorly defined by genetic mutations in a specific set of genes found augmenting the disease occurrence.

The Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital in Mumbai informed that the risk of breast cancer is over 80 per cent higher in those who inherit a specific set of mutated genes — BRCA1 and BRCA2

“The most common genes changes are those of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and women with these genes have more than 80 per cent chance of getting breast cancer during their lifetime,” said Sanjay Dudhat, Head Oncosurgeon at the hospital.BRCA1 (BReast CAncer gene 1) and BRCA2 (BReast CAncer gene 2) are genes that produce proteins that help repair damaged DNA. Everyone has two copies of each of these genesa — one copy inherited from each parent. However, when these genes undergo certain harmful changes, their variant becomes potent enough to cause cancer cells. People who inherit harmful variants in one of these genes have increased risks of several cancers — most notably breast and ovarian cancer.

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