(Tuesday, 1 may HealthDay News) - A blood test that spots of a specific gene changes may reveal risk of women for the years of breast cancer before the disease has a chance of development, researchers report.
British scientists analyzed blood samples of 640 patients with breast cancer and 741 women without breast cancer. Samples of breast cancer, the patients were collected on average three years before they were diagnosed with the disease.
The objective was to know if alteration of unique genes by a process called methylation to predict the risk of breast of woman.
The researchers found that women in the highest level of methylation on a domain of a gene called ATM are two times more likely to develop cancer than those with the level lower methylation. Methylation is a critical process where chemicals called "methyl groups" are added to DNA, to ensure that everything is in good working condition. High levels of high signal of disorder of DNA methylation.
This result has been particularly marked in blood samples taken by women under 60, Dr James Flanagan, research scientist Breast Cancer campaign in the Department of surgery and cancer at the Imperial College London, said in a press release of the Breast Cancer campaign.
The study was published May 1 in the journal Cancer Research.
Unlike previous studies that had blood breast cancer diagnosis, patients blood samples identified alterations in the ATM gene that does not occur because of active cancer or cancer treatment.
The results provide strong evidence that research of this type of alteration of particular genes could be used as a blood test to help predict the chances of a woman to develop breast cancer, researchers have said.
Used in combination with other tools of evaluation of breast cancer risk such as genetic testing and profiling of risk factor, this blood test could help identify women with a higher risk. This alert could be used to monitor these patients and one day may even prevent cancer of the breast.
"We know that genetic variation contributes to the risk of the disease." "With this new study, we can now also say that the epigenetic modification, or differences in how genes are modified, also has a role," said Flanagan.
"We hope that this research is only the beginning of our understanding on the epigenetic component of the risk of cancer of the breast, and in the next years, that we hope to find many examples more genes that contribute to the risk of a person." "He noted the challenge will be how to integrate all the new information into computer models that are currently used for the prediction of individual risk.
"So far, we found changes in a small region of a gene that appear to be associated with a risk of disease, and the next step with this epigenetic research is therefore a genomic approach to try to find all the genes involved," Flanagan said.
More information
The American Cancer Society has more about the risk factors for breast cancer.
SOURCE: Breast Cancer campaign, press release, may 1, 2012
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