A new study, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, claims genomic sequencing could be useful for identifying women who are most likely to benefit from screening, and it could render an effective approach for women to decrease their risk of breast cancer.

Among American women, breast cancer is the second leading cause of death. This year see that about 232,000 women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, along with 40,000 lethal cases.

Early detecting for the disease would be helpful in reducing patient’s death rate, but screening approaches like mammography can sometimes produce inconsistent results.

Mammography , as the most common screening method for breast cancer, is not without its risk. It may produce false-positive results, meaning a woman may be subject to further treatment for no reason. On the other hand, it also show false-negative results, meaning a woman whose has breast cancer may fail to undergo treatment because her results appear normal.

More effective screening approaches are expected to discriminate between women who are high-risk or not. Genomic sequencing is more effective for disease prevention, in which specific genes linked to the disease are identified through searching small sections of DNA. Scientists found that the lifetime risk for the entire female population stood at 0.35, significantly higher than the 0.07 variance, via using such tool and 86 breast cancer gene variants.

These findings indicate that genomic sequencing has the potential to effectively predict a woman’s risk of breast cancer. It’s expected that preventive strategies based on genome sequencing will bring greater gains in disease prevention than previously projected.

Reference:

The Role of Genome Sequencing in Personalized Breast Cancer Prevention. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2014 Oct 23