Our lifestyle decisions play a major role in our risk of developing breast cancer.
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Each of these factors can influence a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.
The absolute risk of a woman developing breast cancer under the age of 40 is very low, says Dr Kumle.
Studies suggest that having a first baby in your late 20s or 30s onwards does increase the overall risk of developing breast cancer.
"These therapies aren't for everyone for now because it depends on how a woman perceives her risk of developing breast cancer, " Chlebowski said.
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Women with a faulty gene have a three to seven times greater risk of developing breast cancer and a higher risk of ovarian cancer.
This is largely due to a decreased use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which has been shown to increase a woman's risk of developing breast cancer.
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She was curious to know what her personal risk of developing breast cancer might be, so she has logged on to the National Cancer Institute's risk calculator.
Three years later it isolated the BRCA1 gene, a segment of DNA that marks 600, 000 American women with a greater than one-in-two chance of developing breast cancer.
In fact, drinking three or more drinks a day may translate into an extra 5 percent of all women developing breast cancer as a result of heavy drinking.
The survey cites a recent Mayo Clinic study that suggested an additional 2 to 3 percent increase of developing breast cancer as a result of being on the pill.
However, women need to focus on their chances of developing breast cancer when making a decision to take tamoxifen, said Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, professor of medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California.
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Ms Morgan said that following the identification of two key genes in the last decade (BRCA1 and BRCA2) genetic testing could now pinpoint whether a woman may be at high risk of developing breast cancer.
Karen Strauss, a 50-year-old breast cancer survivor who developed lymphedema four months ago, is excited about the findings because she may be able to return to some of the exercises she did before developing breast cancer.
Although I might quibble with the exact numbers in the piece, the big picture is this: BRCA1 increases the risk of developing breast cancer about five fold and increases the risk of ovarian cancer more than 10 fold.
Although I might quibble with the exact numbers in the piece, the big picture is this: the mutation increases the risk of developing breast cancer about five fold and increases the risk of ovarian cancer more than 10 fold.
But having a family history of breast or ovarian cancer can significantly increase the risk of developing breast cancer and at a younger age, although most women with a relative with breast cancer are not at a substantially increased risk themselves.
In a New York Times op ed yesterday, superstar actress Angelina Jolie, 37, described how she carries the BRCA1 gene which, her doctors said, put her at an 87% risk of developing breast cancer, and a 50% risk of getting ovarian cancer.
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According to the American Cancer Society, there have been an estimated 289, 870 new cases of breast cancer diagnosed among U.S. women in 2012 and the National Cancer Institute estimates that 1 out of 8 U.S. women are at risk of developing breast cancer in their lifetime.
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The approval opens a market of 40, 000 or so such women to London-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca azn (nyse: azn - news - people), which has the exclusive right to market the drug in the U.S. AstraZeneca already sells the drug to hundreds of thousands of women at risk of developing breast cancer.
Since testing became available in 1996, nearly 1 million people have been screened for BRCA1 and BRCA2, the genetic mutations associated with increasing a woman's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer as much as 87%, according to Myriad Genetics, the diagnostic company that helped isolate the two genes and later developed a test to detect them.
The 37-year-old actress previously said she decided to have the double mastectomy followed by reconstructive surgery after learning she carries a mutation of the BRCA1 gene, which sharply increases her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer.
Researchers have found that women who have had breast cancer can cut their chances of developing cancer in the other breast by 50% if they take the drug.
This reduces the risk of breast cancer developing in the future.
"Another apparently paradoxical finding is that estrogen and progestin impart a small increase in the risks for developing and dying from breast cancer, whereas estrogen alone appears to slightly reduce these risks, " according to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force document outlining the draft recommendations.
At the moment, doctors know about a number of genes which predispose someone towards developing cancer, such as the BRCA1 gene in breast cancer.
Experts calculated that people in the most affected regions had an additional 4 to 7 percent overall risk of developing cancers including leukemia and breast cancer.
Doctors also found that taking exemestane reduced the risks of developing cancer in the other breast or in the uterus.
In such cases, doctors say, women are driven by factors including fears of developing cancer and advances in breast-reconstruction surgery which Ms. Jolie had.
They found that women who had used tamoxifen for between two and four years had a reduced risk of developing a second cancer in the other breast.
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