Last year, about 100,000 women were tested for the BRCA gene mutation that causes a significantly increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer in women, and of prostate and pancreatic cancer in men. And that number is expected to keep growing, since more and more insurance companies are covering the test.
The question many mothers are now asking - especially those who test positive for the mutation - is, when should our daughters be tested?
Medical experts recommend waiting until a child is at least 25 years old before testing. The mutation doesn't increase the risk of any childhood cancers, and there isn't any way of preventing or screening for breast or ovarian cancer until then anyway.
But other families are finding out early - and, as grim as it might be to find out you have the BRCA mutation at 13 or even younger - reporting positive outcomes. Some teens have stopped smoking after discovering their genetic propensity towards cancer. Other girls learned that, because of the mutation, they shouldn't take birth control pills, which can increase the risk of breast cancer.
I have three daughters, and my oldest, at 7, is older than some of the children that have already been tested. Breast cancer doesn't run in my family, but I don't know what I would do if it did - I think I'd get them tested sooner rather than later, because I'm the kind of person that would obsess over the probabilities until I knew for certain. When do you think is the right age?
