Genetic testing does not cause undue worry for breast cancer patients

"Genetic testing is getting to be progressively more complex, but progressively more exact. This has driven to a few ambiguities in test results. The challenge is joining this data into the treatment choice without causing unnecessary stress," researchers. Initially, genetic testing for breast cancer centered only on BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. Presently, newer multigene panel tests search for abnormalities in a dozen or more diverse genes that play a few roles in breast cancer risk. By testing more genes, it's more likely a patient will have a positive test or a variant of unknown significance in other words, something is out of the ordinary but specialists don't know how that impacts cancer risk. The concern is that this greater variety seems lead patients to stress as well much about their chance of breast cancer recurrence when the genetic testing results are ambiguous.

Researchers studied 1,063 ladies treated for early stage breast cancer who had gotten genetic testing between the years 2013-2015, the period in which board testing became better known. Approximately 60 percent of the patients were tried only for BRCA1 and BRCA2, whereas 40 percent had the multigene panel test. Patients were inquired how much and how regularly they worried almost their cancer coming back and the impact that stress had on their life. Overall, 11 percent of patients detailed that cancer stress had a high impact on their life and 15 percent stressed regularly or nearly continuously. Neither the impact nor the recurrence of stress changed considerably based on the sort of genetic testing or the test results. The study is published in JCO Precision Oncology.

Researchers found that patients did not overreact whether they got the newer panel testing or BRCA-only testing, and they did not blow up to the test comes about. Their future cancer worry was not different whether they had a negative test or variation of unknown significance." Virtually all of the patients surveyed received a few forms of genetic counseling. "Genetic counseling is basic to maximize the benefit of testing for patients and their families," says Researchers. "But timely counseling after diagnosis of breast cancer is progressively a challenge since more patients are getting tested and the results are more complex."