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Breast cancer - managing family history - Background information
What is it?
- It is thought that many different factors contribute to the development of breast cancer, including lifestyle, environmental, reproductive, and genetic factors.
- Familial breast cancer occurs in women with more family members with breast or related cancers than would have been expected by chance alone. It may be that members of such a family carry genes that contribute towards the development of breast cancer.
- Early onset, a high incidence of bilateral disease, and an association with other malignancies (such as ovarian cancer) usually characterize breast cancer due to mutations of specific genes (hereditary breast cancer) [Hill et al, 1997].
- Most women will never develop breast cancer and most of those who do will not have familial breast cancer. As one in nine women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime, many people have a relative with breast cancer, but this may be due to chance rather than to genetic or shared lifestyle factors [McIntosh et al, 2004].
- It is important to remember that most women with a family history of breast cancer are not at a substantially increased risk of breast cancer [McIntosh et al, 2004].
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