According to a study of Jewish women in Ontario about one per cent carries a genetic mutation increasing the risk of breast and ovarian cancer. More than 50 per cent of those identified would not be eligible for DNA testing under current provincial rules.

Researchers at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto registered more than 2,000 Jewish women aged 25 to 80 for a test for three mutations in two genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2. According to the results 22 were found to have a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. The same test when conducted on their sisters and daughters stated that eight of them were found to carry the genetic anomaly.

Principal author Dr Steven Narod, director of the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit at Women’s College Hospital stated that none of these women were advised a genetic screening by their health-care providers before.

Kutluk Oktay, M. D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology and principal investigator, in a paper published last week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, concluded that change in the BRCA1 gene are associated with loss of eggs and have also been linked with early start of breast cancer.

One in every 1,000 women is BRCA mutation positive. The occurrence was as high as 2.5 percent in certain ethnic groups such as Ashkenazi Jews.