(January 22, 2015) In a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, researchers analyzed the effect of germline mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 on mortality in ovarian cancer patients up to ten years after diagnosis.
The researchers found that BRCA1/2 mutations are associated with better short-term survival, but this advantage decreases over time and, in BRCA1 carriers is eventually reversed. They concluded that this may have important implications for therapy of both primary and relapsed disease and for analysis of long-term survival in clinical trials of new agents, particularly those that are effective in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers.
