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High-risk women should get breast cancer MRI: study

Posted on: Tuesday, 23 May 2006, 17:10 CDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Detecting breast cancer with sensitive magnetic resonance imaging is expensive but worth it for women who carry a gene mutation that puts them at higher risk for the disease, a study said on Tuesday.

Though rare, the inherited BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations increase a woman's lifetime risk of breast cancer by as much as 80 percent.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) costs 10 times more than mammography but is capable of detecting hard-to-find tumors, such as those under the armpits, earlier. The exam also produces more false-positive results, the study said.

Using a computer model that set a threshold of $100,000 spent for each year of life gained, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine concluded that MRIs are cost-effective for women aged 35 to 54 who have the BRCA1 mutation. MRIs are also cost-effective for women in that age group with the BRCA2 defect for whom mammographies are not sensitive enough to detect tumors.

"Magnetic resonance imaging has a larger role in screening BRCA1 mutation carriers because they are at greater risk for developing breast cancer and their cancers are more aggressive than those that develop in BRCA2 mutation carriers," study author Sylvia Plevritis wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The genetic mutations are found in roughly 2 percent of Ashkenazi Jews, five times the frequency as in the general population, according to the National Cancer Institute.

"With substantial declines in its cost, breast MRI screening is likely to represent an acceptable value for a broader group of women," the study concluded.

Source: REUTERS

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