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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Do you have family members who have been diagnosed with gastrointestinal, breast or ovarian cancer? According to a recent Mayo Clinic study, nearly 5% to 10% of these cancers can be hereditary.
That’s why it is important to share your family medical history with your physician, who can determine if you and your family members may be candidates for genetic testing to identify cancer risk.
“Hereditary predisposition syndromes have been associated with a markedly increased lifetime risk of cancer, some approaching 100%,” says Niloy Jewel Samadder, M.D., a gastroenterologist in the Department of Clinical Genomics at Mayo Clinic’s Arizona campus.
This makes genetic testing critical to early detection of cancer risks and decisions about screening and treatment.
Read the rest of the article on the Advancing the Science blog.