Adding a Genetic Risk Evaluation to Standard Breast Cancer Risk Assessment for African American and Hispanic Women

This study evaluates whether adding a polygenic risk score evaluation to standard breast cancer risk assessment tools helps African American and Hispanic women make more informed decisions about accepting additional breast cancer screening and prevention strategies. Traditional breast cancer risk assessments rely mostly on the presence of standard clinical risk factors including family history, reproductive history, and mammographic breast density. This information can be combined with validated risk estimation models to provide a measure of a patient's 10 year and lifetime risk for breast cancer. A polygenic risk score helps to estimate breast cancer risk in a more individualized way by evaluating a patient's genetics. Adding a polygenic risk score evaluation to traditional screening techniques may help minority women make more informed decisions about screening and prevention strategies for breast cancer.