Breast cancer survival may run in family

Developing breast cancer is to some extent inherited, but a Swedish study suggests breast cancer survival may also run in the family.

Mikael Hartman of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, identified 2,787 mother-daughter pairs and 831 sister pairs among women with breast cancer diagnosed between 1961 and 2001 from Sweden's national Multi-Generation Register.

The study, published in the online journal Breast Cancer Research, suggests that if a woman succumbs to breast cancer her daughters or sisters are more than 60 percent more likely to die within five years if they develop the disease.

The researchers found that a woman's breast cancer prognosis predicts the survival of her first-degree relatives with breast cancer. Mothers surviving breast cancer after five years had daughters with a 91 percent chance of surviving the disease.

Overall, a poor prognosis for a woman gave first-degree relatives a 60 percent to 80 percent higher chance of breast cancer mortality within the five-year time frame, according to Hartman.

source : www.earthtimes.org