{"id":32864,"date":"2025-07-30T16:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/32864\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T16:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T16:39:09","slug":"hboc-genetic-testing-uptake-still-low-even-with-risk-assessment-at-mammography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/32864\/","title":{"rendered":"HBOC Genetic Testing Uptake Still Low Even With Risk Assessment at Mammography"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) genetic testing<\/a> uptake were low among underserved women being screened for breast cancer, according to results of a study published in The Oncologist.<\/p>\n

Uptake of guidelines from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) on HBOC genetic testing is also low among women with a personal or family history of cancer.<\/p>\n

This prospective feasibility study was conducted at The Rose Clinics, a nonprofit organization serving low-income communities in Texas. Women who presented for mammography between 2020 and 2021 (N=501) were assessed for HBOC genetic testing using a cancer genetics risk assessment (CGRA). The subset of women eligible for genetic testing (n=150) received educational materials. A subset of women with a pathogenic variant (PV) or variant of uncertain significance (VUS) were contacted remotely for genetic counseling.<\/p>\n

The women were aged median 52.0 (range, 21 to 79) years, 50.3% were White, 30.1% were uninsured, and they had a median salary of $45,000.<\/p>\n

A personal history of breast or ovarian cancer was reported by 4.9% of the women, including 5 (1.0%) with triple-negative breast cancer. Family histories of breast cancer (37.7%), ovarian cancer (10.4%), pancreatic cancer (6.6%), and prostate cancer (6.0%) were reported.<\/p>\n

Nearly one-third of the women (29.9%) were eligible for genetic testing, of whom 81.3% received educational materials. Of these, 100 women were contacted and offered a genetic testing kit; 19 agreed to complete testing, 14 (9.3% of those eligible) of whom returned the kit. The testing detected VUS in 2 patients and PV in 1 patient; the other 11 patients had negative results.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/p>\n

Given the small proportion of patients who completed testing, the next project phase will focus on improving convenience for patients and developing strategies to overcome patient and program-related barriers to [genetic testing] completion.<\/p>\n

Predictors for completing genetic testing included Native American or Alaskan Native heritage (odds ratio [OR], \u221e; P =.0081), Ashkenazi Jewish heritage (OR, 21.5; P =.015), and White race (OR, 5.2; P =.025); age younger than 50 (OR, 5.2; P =0.25); spoke Spanish as a primary language (OR, 1.7; P =.71); and reported an income of less than $70,000 a year (OR, 5.2; P =.13).<\/p>\n

The most common reasons for not undergoing genetic testing included not wanting to know results (14.6%) and not having time (7.3%). However, nearly half of women who did not undergo testing (48.8%) could not be reached to ask their reason for declining.<\/p>\n

The use of a simple screening tool successfully identified patients at high risk of HBOC who had not previously undergone [genetic testing]. However, these results are limited by the study\u2019s small sample size.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the small proportion of patients who completed testing, the next project phase will focus on improving convenience for patients and developing strategies to overcome patient and program-related barriers to [genetic testing] completion,\u201d said the researchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) genetic testing uptake were low among underserved women being screened for breast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[64,63,336,128],"class_list":["post-32864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-genetics","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}