Are the so-called low penetrance breast cancer genes, ATM, BRIP1, PALB2 and CHEK2, high risk for women with strong family histories?

Abstract

A woman typically presents for genetic counselling because she has a strong family history and is interested in knowing the probability she will develop disease in the future; that is, her absolute risk. Relative risk for a given factor refers to risk compared with either population average risk (sense a), or risk when not having the factor, with all other factors held constant (sense b). Not understanding that these are three distinct concepts can result in failure to correctly appreciate the consequences of studies on clinical genetic testing. Several studies found that the frequencies of mutations in ATM, BRIP1, PALB2 and CHEK2 were many times greater for cases with a strong family histor..