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The discovery of the genetic variant, in conjunction with other markers, could help in the development of future genetic screening tools to assess women's risk of developing invasive lobular cancer, and also gives researchers important new clues about the genetic causes of the disease and a related precursor to cancer called lobular carcinoma in situ.
Scientists have identified the first genetic variant specifically associated with the risk of a difficult-to-diagnose cancer sub-type accounting for around 10-15 percent of all breast cancer cases.
The largest ever study of the breast cancer sub-type, called invasive lobular carcinoma, gives researchers important clues to the genetic causes of this particular kind of breast cancer, which can be missed through screening.
The research, published in the journal PloS Genetics, was co-led by The Institute of Cancer Research, London, King's College London, and Queen Mary University of London. It used gene chip technology and complex statistical analysis to compare the DNA of more than 6,500 women with invasive lobular cancer with the DNA of more than 35,000 women without the disease.
Read the report here: http://bit.ly/QrFNTp
Source: ScienceDaily
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