While current guidelines rarely qualify women over age 65 for hereditary cancer genetic testing, new research published July 22 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggests all women with breast cancer be offered the testing.
A team of researchers from Mayo Clinic Cancer Center evaluated 26,707 women over age 65, about half of which with breast cancer and half without.
Overall, findings showed actionable breast cancer risk genes were present in 3.2 percent of the women, and that more than 2.5 percent of women with estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer had high-risk mutations, despite age.
"A 2.5 percent mutation frequency is often used to trigger genetic testing," said Mayo Clinic's Fergus Couch, PhD, study author. "These results suggest that all women with estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer, and perhaps all women with breast cancer, including those diagnosed over age 65, should be offered hereditary breast cancer screening."
Most breast cancer gene studies have focused on women with a family history of breast or ovarian cancer instead of the general breast cancer population, Dr. Couch said. Therefore, women over age 65 don't often qualify under current guidelines because they're thought to exhibit low rates of genetic mutations in breast cancer genes.
"We were not sure what this study of the older breast cancer population would yield, but our results support broader testing, regardless of age or family history," Dr. Couch said.