Digital mammogram imagesWIKIMEDIA, NEVIT DILMEN
Latina women in the United States have a less than 10 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, while the rate is about 13 percent for non-Hispanic white women and 11 percent for black women. A new genetic analysis of more than 11,000 women has uncovered a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) upstream of an estrogen receptor gene that may contribute to this decreased risk. The study, published this week (October 20) in Nature Communications, is the first of its kind to use genetic information from Latina women.
About 20 percent of Latina women in the U.S. carry one copy of the protective allele, while 1 percent carry two copies—these were associated with 40 percent and 80 percent decreases in the risk of breast cancer, respectively. The ...
