[breastcancer]

Now Breast cancer has become a common disease. Each year, approximately 150,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer, and one in nine American women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime.

But hereditary breast cancer is mainly caused by a mutant gene passed from parents to their children. It is quite rare. Estimates of the incidence of hereditary breast cancer range from between 5 to 10 percent to as many as 27 percent of all breast cancers.

When individuals carry a mutated form of either BRCA1 or BRCA2, they have an increased risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer at some point in their lives. Children of parents with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation have a 50 percent chance of inheriting the gene mutation.


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