Breast cancer risk: Is genetic testing useless?

Genes won't help predict cancerMedikForum
A genetic test does not help to better predict breast cancer, as American researchers have found out.

Thus, the inclusion of these tests in the construction of a model for predicting the development of a deadly disease will not lead to their greater accuracy.

Researchers from the US National Cancer Institute say that since the introduction of additional genetic information into the medical records of patients, the accuracy of predictions about the development of breast cancer has not improved. Unfortunately, the most recent achievements of genetic science have so far proved to be not very effective.

The Americans used information on traditional risk factors, as well as on the 10 most common genetic indicators collected about several thousand women aged 50 to 79 years. These ladies were the subjects of several studies in the USA and one major study in Poland. Two risk determination models were used – one using factors that have long been taken into account, and the other with additional use of genetic information.

Based on the first model, scientists were able to correctly predict the development of breast cancer in 58% of cases. When genetic risk factors were added to the forecasting model, the accuracy of the forecast increased to 61.8%, which in quantitative terms is a very small difference that can be attributed to an arithmetic error.

These studies are published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Sholom Wacholder et al., Performance of Common Genetic Variants in Breast-Cancer Risk Models).

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru19.03.2010