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European Ancestry Links Latinas To Breast Cancer

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@tampatrib.com

Published: December 13, 2008

European ancestry may play a role in breast cancer risk facing Latina women, research says.

The study looked at the genetic ancestry of 440 Latina women with breast cancer and 597 Latina breast-cancer-free women. For every 25 percent increase in European ancestry, there is a 79 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer, says the research reported in the Dec. 1 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Those with lower risk had a more "indigenous Americans" history, which refers to the groups that lived on the American continent prior to the arrival of the European colonizers.
Latina women traditionally have a lower risk of breast cancer than European or African-American women.

"We need to study the possible factors that are placing Latina women of high European ancestry at greater risk," Laura Fejerman, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of California San Francisco says. "The increased risk could be due to environmental factors, genetic factors or the interplay of the two."

Fejerman says the overall risk of Latinas in the United States is less than in European-Americans but higher than indigenous Americans. More research is needed to see if differences can be attributed to nongenetic risk factors, she says.

A staff report

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