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MRI Surveillance Can Reduce Breast Cancer Mortality for Women With BRCA1

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on March 19, 2024.

By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, March 19, 2024 -- For women with a BRCA1 sequence variation, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) surveillance is associated with a reduction in breast cancer mortality, according to a study published online Feb. 29 in JAMA Oncology.

Jan Lubinski, M.D., Ph.D., from the Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Poland, and colleagues compared breast cancer mortality rates in women with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 sequence variation from 59 participating centers in 11 countries who entered an MRI surveillance program. Data were obtained for 2,488 women: 2,004 and 484 with a sequence variation in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, respectively, were included in the analysis.

Of the participants, 70.6 and 29.4 percent had and did not have at least one screening MRI examination, respectively. The researchers found that 13.8 percent of women developed breast cancer after a mean follow-up of 9.2 years and 1.4 percent died of breast cancer. For breast cancer mortality associated with entering an MRI surveillance program, the age-adjusted hazard ratios were 0.20 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.10 to 0.43; P < 0.001) and 0.87 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.10 to 17.25; P = 0.93) for women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 sequence variations, respectively.

"This cohort study supports the recommendation that women with BRCA1 sequence variations aged 30 years or older should be offered MRI surveillance," the authors write. "We observed an 80 percent reduction in breast cancer mortality for women with BRCA1 sequence variations after they entered an MRI surveillance program."

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted March 2024

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