A New Way to Detect Breast Cancer Risk

From our good friends at the Army of Women:

Women who have had a benign breast biopsy are at higher risk of developing breast cancer than women who have not had a breast biopsy. However, there is currently no way to determine which women who have had a benign breast biopsy will actually go on to develop the disease. Is it possible that the amount of DNA damage seen in the cells in the normal breast tissue may be an indicator of future breast cancer risk? A research team at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is trying to find out!

This study may sound familiar to you. That is because we first sent out Calls to Action last year to recruit 150 women who had a benign breast biopsy and then went on the develop breast cancer. With help from the Army of Women members, the researchers are on the way to their goal. But, they need more participants to reach their goal. Let’s get them to the finish line! To help increase enrollment, the researchers have changed their eligibility requirements and are now accepting women diagnosed with breast cancer at least ONE year after having a benign biopsy. If you were diagnosed with breast cancer at least one year after you had a benign biopsy, you live in the United States, and this sounds like a study you might be interested in, read on!

If this study isn’t the right fit for you, please think about your friends, family members and any other women you know who might be interested. As a member of the Army of Women you have an important opportunity to accelerate breast cancer research by forwarding this Call to Action and helping fill this study. Let’s show the researchers what we can do!

Please don’t feel as though you are not contributing to the Army of Women if you aren’t able to sign up for this study or if you haven’t yet been able to sign up for one at all. Forwarding our information to friends and family is just as important as participating in a study. Additionally, many more studies are on the way and, eventually, everyone will be able to participate!

What’s the study about?

The research team is analyzing normal breast tissue from benign biopsies for evidence of DNA damage in the breast cells and then investigating whether the presence of this DNA damage can predict who will develop breast cancer later in life. This study will happen in two phases.

Currently, the researchers are looking for women who had a normal breast biopsy and went on to develop breast cancer. In a few months, they will be enrolling women who had a normal breast biopsy but did NOT go on to develop breast cancer. By recruiting both women who did develop breast cancer and women who did not, the research team will be able to look for markers in the breast cells that might be an indicator of breast cancer risk.

This Call to Action is for women who had a benign breast biopsy and then developed breast cancer.

What’s involved?

If you agree to participate in the Discovery of Early Markers of Breast Cancer study, you will be asked to fill out a questionnaire about your reproductive history, smoking history, and family health background. You will receive and then return the questionnaire by mail (at no cost to you). You will then need to ask your doctor or pathologist for two things: the pathology slides from your benign breast biopsy and a block of your paraffin embedded benign breast tissue. (You will be given a detailed instruction sheet to give to your doctor or pathologist to explain what is needed and why.) You will mail these items to the researchers, at no cost to you. If you prefer, you can give the research team permission to request the pathology slides and tissue block from your doctor.

The researchers may contact you at a later date to see if you would be willing to have a core biopsy so that they can obtain additional tissue for their study. The core biopsy would be performed on the opposite, unaffected breast. The research team will assist you in getting to a clinic where the core biopsy can be performed, and will provide you with information about how the tissue sample can be mailed to the researchers, at no cost to you.

Finally, the researchers may contact you at a later date to ask you to request a block of your paraffin embedded tumor tissue from your doctor or pathologist. (You will be given a detailed instruction sheet to give to your doctor or pathologist to explain what is needed and why). You will mail this item to the researchers, at no cost to you.

The researchers need to enroll 150 women in this study.