Black and White women diagnosed with breast cancer were just as likely to be carrying pathogenc variants in 12 genes linked to a risk of breast cancer in a study of nearly 30,000 women.
“A potential reason that past studies showed that Black women who underwent commercial testing had more mutations than white women is that the Black women had to be at higher risk to get tested. The bar was higher for them to get the testing they needed,” said researcher Susan Domchek. The findings reiterate the importance of making sure all women have equal access to genetic testing, she added.
- See “Prevalence of mutations linked to breast cancer risk similar between Black, white patients” by Ryan Lawrence on the healio.com website (June 23, 2021)
- See the abstract of the scientific paper “Comparison of the Prevalence of Pathogenic Variants in Cancer Susceptibility Genes in Black Women and Non-Hispanic White Women With Breast Cancer in the United States” by Susan M Domchek et al.
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