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KRAS-variant associated with breast, ovarian cancer risk
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Women with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome who are not carriers of BRCA genes may have a KRAS-variant, according to the results of a recent study.
Women with this syndrome have an increased risk of developing primary breast and ovarian cancer, and although an association with BRCA1 and BRCA2 has been previously established, only about 50% of women with the syndrome are positive for these mutations. Those without them, referred to as uninformative, had previously been thought to have no detectable mutations.
In this study, researchers enrolled 232 women from eight institutions and tested their germline DNA for the KRAS-variant (rs61764370) to determine if there was an association between hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome and the mutation.
Source: Pilarski R. PLoS One. 2012;doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037891.
The variant was found in 21% of patients, a significantly higher proportion than the average population (15%). Among women in the study who were BRCA1 or BRCA2 positive, the occurrence of the KRAS-variant was similar to that of the general population. However, when uninformative patients were tested, about 27.2% of patients had the KRAS-variant.
The researchers also found an association between KRAS-variant and time from ovarian cancer diagnosis. Those women who were tested for the variant within 2 years of diagnosis had a prevalence of 38.5%, compared with 16.7% in women tested more than 2 years postdiagnosis.
Researchers also found that a majority of women with the KRAS-variant developed breast cancer prior to ovarian cancer.
“It appears that there could have been an opportunity for ovarian cancer prevention through chemoprevention and/or prophylactic oophorectomy for these women,” the researchers wrote.
Reference:
- Pilarski R. PLoS One. 2012;doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037891.