👉Lifetime breast cancer risk is only 13% for identical twins of breast cancer patients compared to 9% for dizygotic twins.
👉Twin studies are important because they help us understand how far genetics will get us as we try to risk stratify populations.
👉Other twin studies have estimated that 12% to 30% of breast cancer is primarily genetic in origin.
👉Thus, only a minority of breast cancers are directly attributed to germline genetics and only 5% to 10% are thought to be due to inheritance of mutations in major autosomal dominant breast cancer predisposition genes.
👉REFERENCES
Baker SG, Lichtenstein P, Kaprio J, et al. Genetic susceptibility to prostate, breast, and colorectal cancer among Nordic twins. Biometrics. 2005;61:55-63.
Lichtenstein P, Holm NV, Verkasalo PK, et al. Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer–analyses of cohorts of twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. N Engl J Med. 2000;343:78-85.
Locatelli I, Lichtenstein P, Yashin AI. The heritability of breast cancer: a Bayesian correlated frailty model applied to Swedish twins data. Twin Res. 2004;7:182-191.