Ashkenazic women at greater risk
LEISAH NAMM
Staff Writer
Studies have shown that women of Ashkenazic Jewish descent have a much greater risk of breast cancer than the general population of women, says Dr. Rich Dobrusin, a family practitioner in Mesa.
In a November 1997 issue of "Gynecologic Oncology," a scientific publication of the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists, researchers from Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem reported that Ashkenazic Jewish women possess genetic markers for both breast and ovarian cancers at a high frequency rate.
In another study, published in April 1996 in "Nature Genetics," researchers reported that Ashkenazic Jewish women have a much greater risk of developing early-onset hereditary breast cancer as a result of a defective BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene than women in the general population.
The two tumor-suppressor genes play a role in regulating cell growth. A mutation in either gene confers an 85 percent chance of developing breast cancer during a woman's lifetime.
According to a 1995 article in The Detroit News, men who inherit the altered gene do not appear to have an increased cancer risk but can pass the gene on to their children. Researchers "suspect the faulty gene might account for as much as 16 percent of breast and 39 percent of ovarian cancers in Ashkenazic women age 50 and under, compared with 4 percent of breast cancers and 12 percent of ovarian cancers in the general population," according to the article.
Dobrusin says the standard recommendation is for women to get a first mammogram at age 35. At age 40, women should have a mammogram every two years and starting at 50, every year.
Women in their 20s should begin self-examining their breasts for abnormalities, he says.
"Women should look for any area of fullness or a lump in the breast that persists," says Dobrusin. "A lot of times, women will get fullness or tenderness in the breasts that comes and goes with (menstrual) periods," he says.
Women should be cautious of anything that stays there or anything that feels different in the breast.
"Once women start doing breast exams on a regular basis, if they learn what their breasts normally feel like, that's the key," he says.
According to the National Cancer Institute, family history is the strongest single predictor of a woman's chance of developing breast cancer. However, women who don't have a history of family breast cancer are not immune.
"Saying 'My family doesn't have a history of breast cancer' certainly does not give you 100 percent protection," Dobrusin says.
He says some women fail to perform self-exams and get check-ups because breast cancer doesn't run in their family. That's a "bad idea," he says.
"The key to breast cancer right now is early detection and if we can catch (it) when there's a very small lump or no lump at all, and the breast cancer has not spread, ... the cure rates are very high."
The longer the cancer has time to spread, the lower the likelihood of effecting a cure, he says.
Dobrusin, who lends rhythm guitar and lead vocals to "Breast Cancer CD 2000: Soothing the Soul and Encouraging the Spirit," takes breast cancer personally. His grandmother, Leah Barth, died of the disease in 1983. By the time her cancer was detected, "it had spread to her bones and was just too far advanced to really treat," he says.
Then, about 2 1/2 years ago, Dobrusin's mother, Ruth Dobrusin, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"My experience with my mom and my mom's experience with breast cancer is she was very vigilant in watching out for any lumps or any changes and she was religious about going for yearly mammograms and yearly ultrasounds," he says.
As a result, her cancer was diagnosed and treated at an early stage.
"We're just hoping that we never hear from this again," he says. "One of the worst things women can do if they feel a lump is to fear (but) ignore it."
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