How much does genetic information help to better predict the chance of developing breast cancer?

What is it about?

There is a lot of interest in using genetic data to better inform what a woman's risk of breast cancer is. We wanted to know whether the resources poured into research in this area truly adds useful information. In other words, do we really need to discover more and more genes or do we already have enough information to help us use genetic data to predict the risk of developing breast cancer?

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Photo by Peter Boccia on Unsplash

Photo by Peter Boccia on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We have found that genetic data do add useful information but the women who stand to gain the most are women with intermediate risk of developing breast cancer. This means that we can use a survey form to capture classical risk information and only ask those women with intermediate risk of breast cancer based on the survey results to take the genetic test. In this way, we can save on the cost of testing and reduce the risk of unintended loss of test data.