Journal
NATURE REVIEWS CANCER
Volume 20, Issue 8, Pages 417-436Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41568-020-0266-x
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Peter MacCallum Research Foundation
- Harold Homes Equity Trustees grant
Ask authors/readers for more resources
This Review presents the evidence for the role of risk factors in breast cancer incidence and their inclusion in risk estimation tools as a step towards precision prevention to specifically target those women at increased risk for appropriate risk-reducing interventions. Despite decades of laboratory, epidemiological and clinical research, breast cancer incidence continues to rise. Breast cancer remains the leading cancer-related cause of disease burden for women, affecting one in 20 globally and as many as one in eight in high-income countries. Reducing breast cancer incidence will likely require both a population-based approach of reducing exposure to modifiable risk factors and a precision-prevention approach of identifying women at increased risk and targeting them for specific interventions, such as risk-reducing medication. We already have the capacity to estimate an individual woman's breast cancer risk using validated risk assessment models, and the accuracy of these models is likely to continue to improve over time, particularly with inclusion of newer risk factors, such as polygenic risk and mammographic density. Evidence-based risk-reducing medications are cheap, widely available and recommended by professional health bodies; however, widespread implementation of these has proven challenging. The barriers to uptake of, and adherence to, current medications will need to be considered as we deepen our understanding of breast cancer initiation and begin developing and testing novel preventives.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available