Ovarian-Cyst.org

Kelly Bolton – National Cancer Institute, Maryland, USA. Women with ovarian cancer who have BRCA2 gene mutation are more likely to survive the malignancy than women with the BRCA1 mutation but patients with either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation have better survival compared to patients who carried the wild-type for both genes. Approximately 1 in 400 to 1 in 800 women are born with mutations in either BRCA1 or BRCA2, which are known to predispose carriers to the development of ovarian and breast cancer. Dr Kelly Bolton and colleagues evaluated 3531 cases of epithelial ovarian cancer, including 1178 women with BRCA1 mutations, 367 with BRCA2 mutations, and 1986 with neither mutation. After adjusting for baseline characteristics, the five-year survival of women without mutations was 36 percent. Survival for BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers was 46 percent and 61 percent, respectively. Further study is needed to explain why women with BRCA2 mutations had better survival than BRCA1 carriers, or those without either mutation although it is thought that the mutations may affect a patient’s response to platinum based chemotherapy.