Prostate Cancer In The Family May Increase A Woman's Risk Of Breast Cancer

New findings published in the journal of the American Cancer Society, CANCER, show that both prostate cancer and breast cancer, tend to cluster together in the same families.

A new study conducted by researchers at Wayne State University found that the risk of developing these health problems were increased among individuals with a family history of the same disease, particularly if they had first-degree relatives who suffered from the problem.

Statistics show that breast cancer will affect about 1 in 8 women in the United States at some point in their lifetime.

Furthermore, 231,840 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in the country this year alone, with more than 40,000 deaths from the health issue, according to the American Cancer Society.

For the study, researchers examined women who were cancer free when they enrolled in the observational study. However, after several years, some who had relatives analyzed that a family history of prostate cancer in first-degree relatives i.e. fathers, brothers, and sons was linked with a 14 percent increase in breast cancer risk for women.

Those who had a history of first-degree relatives with a history of both cancers also had a 78 percent increased risk of breast cancer. Furthermore, the risk was found to be higher among African American women than white women.

"These findings are important in that they can be used to support an approach by clinicians to collect a complete family history of all cancers - particularly among first-degree relatives - in order to assess patient risk for developing cancer," said researcher Dr. Jennifer L. Beebe-Dimmer of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, in a news release. "Families with clustering of different tumors may be particularly important to study in order to discover new genetic mutations to explain this clustering."