Hispanic women more likely to carry breast cancer gene
Updated: 2007-12-26 15:24
BEIJING -- A study indicated many Hispanic women carry a gene mutation that gave many Jewish women a high risk of breast cancer, researchers said in the Journal of American Medical Association as quoted by media reports Wednesday.
The gene mutation is called BRCA1, which raises the risk of breast cancer to 65 percent by age 70.
Based on more than 3,000 breast cancer patients in northern California before age 65 between 1996 and 2005, the study showed that 3.5 percent of Hispanic women have the BRCA1 mutation, compared 8.3 percent for Ashkenazic Jews and 2.2 percent for non-Ashkenazic white women.
The mutation occur in Asian-American women only at 0.5 percent and 1.3 percent among black women.
Researchers tend to believe that maybe many Hispanic women have unknown Jewish ancestry.
About 178,500 women are diagnosed breast cancer and 40,500 die of it or its implication in the United States each year.
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