Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
‘Jolie gene’ cancer survival rate same as non-carriers
WOMEN carrying faulty BRCA genes have similar chances of survival as women without the mutations, research has found.
Five years after diagnosis, 83.8% of carriers of mutated BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes were still alive, compared to 85% of non-carriers.
It is dubbed the Jolie gene after actress Angelina Jolie, who had a double mastectomy and her ovaries removed after discovering she had a faulty BRCA1 gene. The mutation increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancers, with 45-90% of carriers getting breast cancer, compared to 12.5% overall.
Researchers studied 2,733 women aged 18-40, over eight years, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time.
The results of 558 of the women, who had the rare triple-negative breast cancer, suggest that those with BRCA mutations have similar survival chances to those without, at five and 10 years after diagnosis.
The findings were published in The Lancet Oncology journal.
Prof Peter Fasching, of Friedrichalexander University Erlangennuremberg, Germany, said of the research: “Patients with BRCA mutations are at increased risk of developing secondary cancers.
“Knowing that BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations do not result in a different prognosis might change the therapeutic approach.
“This needs more research as preventive surgical measures might have an effect on what might be a very long life after a diagnosis of breast cancer at a young age.”