EurekAlert! -- In a research article published in this week’s PLoS Medicine, Ann Killary (from the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center) and colleagues describe a new gene called DEAR1 that is genetically altered by mutation and deletion in breast tumors, and that may provide a new breast cancer prognostic marker. Each year, more than one million women discover that they have breast cancer. Although breast cancer is usually diagnosed in women in their 50s or 60s, some women develop breast cancer much earlier. Cancer in younger women tends to be more likely to recur or spread, and young women with breast cancer have a lower overall survival rate than older women with cancer. It would therefore be particularly useful to be able to identify those young women who are specifically at the greatest risk of cancer recurrence, so that they could be offered intensive surveillance.
