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Study: Ovaries' removal reduced breast cancer mortality rate

Breast cancer patients who underwent an oophorectomy improved their survival odds, researchers say.

By Brooks Hays

TORONTO, April 28 (UPI) -- Recent research has showed there is no quantifiable health benefit to removing both breasts. but a new study suggests that for women diagnosed with breast cancer, the removal of their ovaries may improve their odds of survival.

For women diagnosed with breast cancer and with either a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, the removal of their ovaries resulted in a 56 percent reduction in the chance of breast cancer death.

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The presence of a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation dramatically increases the risk of primary or secondary ovarian cancer, as well as the return of breast cancer, after an initial breast cancer diagnosis. But that extra risk could be mitigated by ovaries removal surgery, a procedure known as an oophorectomy.

The risk reduction was measured after health researchers at the Women's College Research Institute, in Toronto, Canada, followed the health outcomes of 676 women facing breast cancer diagnoses. Roughly half of the women had their ovaries removed. The study followed the patients for 20 years. The overall survival rate for the study population was 73 percent.

Researchers found women with a BRCA1 mutation were most likely to benefit from an oophorectomy. The procedure was associated with a 62 percent mortality reduction. Those with a BRCA2 mutation also enjoyed a drop in mortality risk (43 percent), but researchers determined it was not statistically significant.

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"It is important that follow-up studies be performed on women who undergo oophorectomy as part of their initial treatment, in particular, those women who undergo oophorectomy in the first year after diagnosis," researchers wrote in their new study, published this week in JAMA Oncology.

"It is also important that our observations be confirmed in other study populations," the authors concluded. "Further data are needed, in particular for BRCA2 carriers in order to confirm the benefit of oophorectomy in this population."

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