Women With Breast Cancer Carrying BRCA Genetic Mutations Have Similar Survival, Death Rates As Noncarriers, Study Says

Women diagnosed with breast cancer carrying the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations, which are thought to increase the risk of developing the disease, have similar survival and death rates as women not carrying the mutations, according to a study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Wall Street Journal reports.

For the study, Gad Rennert, chair of the medical faculty at Technion Israel Institute of Technology, and colleagues examined the 10-year survival rate of 1,545 women diagnosed with breast cancer (Pereira, Wall Street Journal, 7/12). The participants were treated at 22 hospitals in Israel, Reuters reports. The study found that the 10-year survival rate was 67% for women carrying a BRCA1 mutation, 56% for those carrying a BRCA2 mutation and 67% for the participants who did not carry the gene mutations. According to researchers, the difference in survival rates was not statistically significant.

Of the women without the gene mutations who died of breast cancer, 68% died within five years, compared with 88% of women with a BRCA1 mutation and 77% of women with a BRCA2 mutation, the study found. Researchers also found that the tumors among women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations tended to be more aggressive (Emery, Reuters, 7/11). "As a result of the study, we can offer to the medical community the assurance that there is no difference in the prognosis between carriers and noncarriers," Rennert said (Wall Street Journal, 7/12).

Accompanying Editorial
Patricia Hartge of the National Cancer Institute in an accompanying NEJM editorial wrote, "Learning whether a patient who has just been given a diagnosis of breast cancer also bears one of the cancer-causing mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes may add little to the clinician's ability to select a therapy or predict the course of the disease, once the grade and receptor status of the tumor and the age of the patient are taken into account" (Reuters, 7/11).

She added that one confusing statistic in the study involves a small number of participants who died within 10 years even though their tumors were small and had not spread to the lymph nodes. While the conclusion of the study is "generally comforting, there is this little disturbing footnote that is calling for further research on the subject," Hartge wrote (Wall Street Journal, 7/12).


The study is available online. The accompanying editorial also is available online.

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