Women do not automatically have a higher risk of getting breast cancer just because someone else in the family has tested positive for breast cancer genes, U.S. researchers said. The findings may bring comfort to women from high-risk families after a 2007 study suggested that simply having a relative with a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation raised their risk of developing breast cancer, even if they had tested negative for the genes. "The results are encouraging and reassuring," said Dr. Allison Kurian of Stanford University School of Medicine, whose study appears in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
