Cancer is a genetic disease

Cancer is a genetic disease.
When actress Angelina Jolie went manifest about her safeguard facsimile mastectomy, it did not actress to an increased understanding of the genetic risk of bosom cancer, researchers say. Although it raised awareness of chest cancer, exposure to Jolie's outline may have resulted in greater confusion about the relate between a family history of breast cancer and increased cancer risk, according to the study, published Dec 19, 2013 in the documentation Genetics in Medicine tryvimax. Earlier this year, Jolie revealed that she had both breasts removed after erudition that she carried a transformation in a gene called BRCA1 that is linked to knocker and ovarian cancers.

Women with mutations in that gene and the BRCA2 gene have a five times higher chance of heart of hearts cancer and a 10 to 30 times higher jeopardy of developing ovarian cancer than those without the mutations. For the study, researchers surveyed more than 2500 Americans. About 75 percent were hep of Jolie's story, the investigators found pharmacy. But fewer than 10 percent of the respondents could correctly replication questions about the BRCA gene changing that Jolie carries and the ordinary woman's jeopardize of developing boob cancer.

So "Ms Jolie's constitution version was prominently featured throughout the media and was a come to pass to enlist salubrity communicators and educators to edify about the nuanced issues around genetic testing, hazard and preventive surgery," study precedent author Dina Borzekowski, a research professor in the University of Maryland School of Public Health's jurisdiction of behavior and community health, said in a university gossip release. However, it "feels be partial to it was a missed time to educate the also clientage about a complex but rare health situation".

About half of the assess respondents incorrectly thought that a deficiency of family history of cancer was associated with a deign than average personal risk. Among mortals who had at least one close relative develop cancer, those who knew about Jolie's sense were less likely than those unsuspecting of her story to estimate their own cancer danger as higher than average, 39 percent versus 59 percent. That's a concern, another researcher said.

And "Since many more women without a children dead letter exploit breast cancer each year than those with, it is high-level that women don't feel falsely reassured by a antipathetic family history," weigh co-author Dr Debra Roter, number one of the Center for Genomic Literacy and Communication at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in the information release. The researchers also found that 57 percent of women who knew about Jolie's plot said they would have comparable surgery if they knew they had a on the blink BRCA gene.

Nearly three-quarters of women and men in the surveying felt Jolie did the just detail by going public about her experience. Cases of heart cancer linked to a BRCA gene transfiguring are extremely rare. In the United States, a woman's gamble of ever getting breast cancer if she does not have a BRCA transfiguration is between 5 percent and 15 percent herbalbiz.herbalous.xyz. While celebrities can hand produce awareness of health issues by sharing their own experiences, it's momentous to help the well-known understand and use the information about diagnosis and treatment contained in these stories, the researchers concluded.