VIDEO: Genetic, physiological factors that may increase ovarian cancer risk

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The biggest factors are family history, right, whether you have a BRCA1 or 2 mutation. Other factors, more physiological factors are if you had, you know, menarche at an early age and menopause at a late age, meaning a long reproductive lifespan, if there was no barriers or stoppage of ovulation, so if you didn't take birth control pills, if you didn't have children, if you didn't breastfeed, all things that usually suppress ovulation, that's a higher risk for ovarian cancer. Conversely, if you did take birth control pills or had kids or breastfed, that suppresses your chances of getting ovarian cancer. So there are genetic hereditary factors and there's also physiological factors that can influence your risk of ovarian cancer. In addition to BRCA1 and 2, we know that there are other genes that sort of play in the sandbox of genome integrity control, and some of those like RAD51C and D and others may also influence risk. And so people are trying to develop what we call essentially risk scores or composite risk scores to see whether the combination of these different mutations really portend a higher risk and that you should do something about that, whether it's prophylactic surgery or surveillance.