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Dad can pass down hidden breast cancer gene
Genetic risk on father's side of the family is often overlooked, experts say
A deadly gene's path can hide in a family tree when a woman has few aunts and older sisters, making it appear that her breast cancer struck out of nowhere when it really came from Dad.

"Interestingly, it's about Dad," Weitzel said. Half of genetic breast cancers are inherited from a woman's father, not her mother. But unless Dad has female relatives with breast cancer, the faulty gene may have been passed down silently, without causing cancer.

Doctors often overlook the genetic risk from the father's side of the family.

The study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the genetic test results from 306 women diagnosed with breast cancer before age 50. None of the cancer patients in the study had a family history of breast or ovarian cancer. Among the women with plenty of female relatives, about 5 percent had BRCA gene mutations. But among those with few sisters and aunts older than 45 (when breast cancer would be likely to appear), almost 14 percent had mutations of the genes BRCA1 or BRCA2. That suggests that these cancer patients were unaware of their genetic mutations because there were so few women in the family to signal a cancer risk.

You get it too. Have you been checked lately?

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http://www.menagainstbreastcancer.org/