Two families here have tested positive for the same faulty gene which American actress Angelina Jolie inherited that increased her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
But lead researcher Judith Hurley said the “good news” was there would be no need to panic because the results “did not look like there is going to be a big increase in incidents and risks of inherited breast cancer here”.
Jolie revealed yesterday she had undergone a preventative double mastectomy to reduce her risk of developing breast cancer.
The news came hours before 85 families who participated in research spearheaded by Hurley, a United States oncologist, were receiving results of those tests. All the participants were survivors of either breast or ovarian cancer.
Members of the two families were counselled at the Barbados Cancer Society by Hurley and some of the team.
The clinical medicine professor at the University of Miami said people testing positive for the defective BRCA 1 mutation gene have about a 70 to 80 per cent risk of developing breast cancer and about a 40 per cent risk of developing ovarian cancer.
“Some people say ‘well, I think I’ll have my breast off rather than have a 70 per cent chance of having breast cancer’. That is obviously the discussion that Angelina Jolie had with herself and her family, and they may have made that decision,” Hurley said.
Noting that the research was not finished, Hurley said they would continue to look at women whose family history seemed suspicious, but did not test positive for the gene.
The research started in The Bahamas, which has the world’s highest rate of inherited breast cancer, and was extended to Barbados, the Cayman Islands, Dominica and Jamaica.
Hurley said the goal was to find out whether the gene was common in each of the five countries and “find a very cost-effective and cheap way of screening for that”.
Hurley said the US, which has a three to five per cent mutation risk, was being used as a baseline and the results so far indicated that, except for The Bahamas, the participating nations would have results in that same region.
