For young women who have a high risk of breast cancer because of genetic mutations or family history, the radiation from yearly mammograms might make the risk even higher, researchers reported at a radiology conference Monday.
The findings come not from new research, but from an analysis of data from six earlier studies involving about 5,000 high-risk women in the U.S. and Europe, some of whom had breast cancer. Their median age was 45.
Women exposed to radiation before age 20 or women with five or more exposures were 2.5 times as likely to develop breast cancer as were women who had not been exposed.
Researchers, who presented the analysis in Chicago at a meeting of the Radiological Society of North America, caution that the new report is not conclusive.
