TUESDAY, Jan. 17 (HealthDay News) -- The incidence of breast cancer in Icelandic women under age 70 who carry a particular mutation of the BRCA2 gene quadrupled over the last 80 years, according to a study in the Jan. 18 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Laufey Tryggvadottir, M.Sc., of the Icelandic Cancer Registry in Reykjavik, and colleagues analyzed registry data on all breast cancer cases diagnosed in Iceland since 1911, and determined mutation status in 847 breast cancer probands diagnosed from 1921 through 1985.
Of the 847 probands, 88 carried the BRCA2 999del5 mutation, the researchers found. The cumulative incidence of breast cancer before age 70 in these mutation carriers increased from 18.6% in 1920 to 71.9% in 2002. The incidence in relatives of the probands who did not carry the mutation and in the general Icelandic population increased over the same period from 2.6% to 10.7% and from 1.8% to 7.5%, respectively.
"The results indicate that the penetrance of the Icelandic BRCA2 founder mutation increased nearly fourfold in 80 years, whereas the risk of death from breast cancer before age 70 years increased only approximately twofold," the authors write.
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