[Correspondence] Genetic testing for young women with breast cancer

Ellen Copson and colleagues1 reported on the effect of carrying a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation on survival in a cohort of young women with breast cancer. They did genetic testing on 2733 patients with breast cancer in the Prospective Outcomes in Sporadic versus Hereditary breast cancer (POSH) cohort in the UK and found 12% carried a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. At 10 years, survival of BRCA carriers and non-carriers was not significantly different. Copson and colleagues did not find a significant protective effect of bilateral mastectomy on breast cancer death after a mean follow-up of 8·2 years; however, only 21 (6·2%) women with a mutation had a bilateral mastectomy, even though, among carriers, the 10-year cumulative risk of contralateral breast cancer is 30% at 5 years2 and 54 participants were reported to have contralateral breast cancer (which might have been prevented).

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