Early breast cancer screening may help some: study

Starting breast cancer screening as early as age 25 may help women who carry a genetic mutation linked to a higher risk of cancer live longer, suggests a new study.

"Results indicate that breast cancer deaths will decrease because of screening," study co-author Dr. Janie Lee, who specializes in breast imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, said by email.

Researchers looked at which breast cancer screenings - mammogram or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) - were effective in women who carry gene mutations BRCA1 and BRCA2, known to increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. They looked at women aged 25, 30, 35 and 40 years.

The study, reported in the journal Cancer, found that compared to no screening at all, annual screening starting at age 25 extended life by 1.3 to 1.8 years. Screening with a breast MRI every six months extended life by 1.5 to 1.7 years.

The tests were not perfect. Over the course of their lives, women with BRCA1 who began having mammograms at the age of 25 would have two false positives - a finding that doesn't turn out to be cancer. Those women with BRCA1 who had an annual mammogram and breast MRI would have four false positives.

For BRCA2 carriers, the corresponding numbers of false positives were three and eight.

The authors based their findings on a computer model that may not translate into real life, noted Dr. Carol Fabian, who specializes in breast cancer research at the University of Kansas and was not part of the study.

"This is a model so they are applying things that have been learned in other studies," Fabian told Reuters Health.

The importance of finding breast cancer early

The goal of screening exams for early breast cancer detection is to find cancers before they start to cause symptoms. Screening refers to tests and exams used to find a disease, such as cancer, in people who do not have any symptoms. Early detection means using an approach that lets breast cancer get diagnosed earlier than otherwise might have occurred.

Breast cancers that are found because they are causing symptoms tend to be larger and are more likely to have already spread beyond the breast. In contrast, breast cancers found during screening exams are more likely to be smaller and still confined to the breast. The size of a breast cancer and how far it has spread are some of the most important factors in predicting the prognosis (outlook) of a woman with this disease.

Most doctors feel that early detection tests for breast cancer save thousands of lives each year, and that many more lives could be saved if even more women and their health care providers took advantage of these tests. Following the American Cancer Society's guidelines for the early detection of breast cancer improves the chances that breast cancer can be diagnosed at an early stage and treated successfully.