New Test Assesses Individual Breast C...( Other than family history and genetic...),Health

Other than family history and genetics, the best tool experts have to predict individual breast cancer risk is the Gail model, which takes into account age and number of previous biopsies, as well as family history and pregnancy history.

But, the authors stated, the Gail model is "only slightly better than chance alone."

This is not the case in cervical or colon cancer, where pathologists can tell from physical characteristics of actual tissue how likely a person is to get that type of cancer.

Breast cancer originates in the breast lobules. The lobules are supposed to disappear as a woman ages, reducing her breast cancer risk, but this doesn't always happen.

The authors analyzed tissue from 85 women with breast cancer (as well as earlier tissue samples taken before they developed the cancer) and 142 control samples from women who had had benign breast disease.

The more acini per lobule a woman had and the larger the lobule, the higher her risk for developing breast cancer, the researchers found.

This new technique proved more accurate than the Gail model.

The study was a relatively small one by breast cancer standards. More research will not only have to have more women, it will also need to incorporate additional risk factors and will need to be tested in a separate set of women, Radisky said.

Still, he said, the current results "look very good" and he would be "pretty shocked if [more findings] were not consistent."

If more studies do replicate these initial findings, the procedure might find its way into clinical practice fairly easily and quickly.

"That's the real power of this. It's not high tech. It could be done anywhere that takes tissue and has a microscope," Radisky said. "It could be done anywhere once we build the model, using factors that are available to the physician just from asking the patient and taking tissue, which could be ev
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