"These findings underscore why women need to learn as much as they can about their family health history and then share that information with their health-care professionals. However, it must be emphasized that the presence or absence of a predictive factor does not automatically equate with a high or low likelihood of carrying a breast cancer gene mutation," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "The majority of women with breast cancer -- even those with a family history of the disease -- do not carry mutations in these genes. These predictors need to be considered in the context of each woman's complete family health history."



In addition to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, NHGRI, and NICHD, the team included researchers from the National Cancer Institute; Bay State Medical Center, Springfield, MA; the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; University of Southern California, Los Angeles; and Wayne State University, Detroit.



How to Create a Family Health History
To help people in the task of creating their family health histories, HHS offers a free, computerized tool that organizes health information into a printout that can be can taken to health-care professionals. The tool, called "My Family Health Portrait," is available at https://familyhistory.hhs.gov/.


NHGRI is one of 27 institutes and centers at the NIH, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Additional information about NHGRI can be found at its Web site, www.genome.gov.



The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.



For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov, or call NCI's Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).


The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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