Counsel women with likely BRCA family history: panel

By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Doctors should screen women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer to see if the cancers might be due to certain mutations – and if so, women should be counseled about their personal risks before getting tested, a government-backed panel said this week. One in 300 to one in 500 women has a BRCA mutation. According to the National Cancer Institute, a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer during her lifetime increases from 12 to 60 percent if she carries the mutation, and ovarian cancer from 1.4 percent to between 15 and 40 percent. …