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# New Test Predicts Who Get Invasive Breast Cancer
- URL: https://www.foodconsumer.org/test_predicts_who_get_invasive_breast_cancer_2904101005/
- Published: 2010-04-29T22:02:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T15:58:28.000Z
- Description: Karla Kerlikowske and colleagues followed 1,162 women treated with lumpectomy for DCIS and found DCIS first noticed as a breast lump predicted later invasive cancer better than DCIS found by mammography. She says as many as 44 percent might need only monitoring.
- Author: Food Consumer
- Tags: Drug, Health News, #vivvo-import

A press release by the University of California - San Francisco says researchers from the university have developed a novel test to accurately predict whether a woman with ductal carcinoma in situ DCIS, the most common form of non-invasive breast cancer are at risk of developing invasive tumors in later years.

Karla Kerlikowske, MD and colleagues studied 1,162 women aged 40 years and older with diagnosed DCIS and treated with lumpectomy and found two factors were predictive of risk of developing invasive cancer within eight years after a diagnosis of DCIS.

The researchers found a breast lump that is diagnosed as DCIS was more predictive of a high risk of subsequent invasive breast cancer than DCIS diagnosed by mammography.

Mammography is recommended as a routine screening tool for women aged 50 or older. One drawback is that doctors based on mammograms rarely know whether a woman with DCIS would develop an invasive tumor years after diagnosis. So the treatment is kind of experimental.

Even though women with DCIS rarely develop invascvive breast cancer, too many women opt to treat the disease more aggressively than necessarily because they fear an invasive cancer may strike them later. 

The press release by the University says currently about 35 % opt for a lumpectomy, about 25 % for a complete mastectomy, 3 to 5 % for active surveillance only and the remainder for lumpectomy plus radiation or hormone treatment or both.

Only about 11 of 100 women treated by lumpectomy end up developing invasive breast cancer within eight years of the diagnosis of DCIS and only 1 to 2 % die of breast cancer within 10 years.

Kerlikowske said with the novel test, as many as 44% of women with DCIS may not require any further treatment and the only thing they need to do is get monitored.

The biomarkers used in the method include estrogen receptor, progesterone receptor, ki67 antigen, p53, p16, epidermal growth factor receptor-2, and cyclooxygenase-2.

Women who had high levels of p16, cyclooxygenase-2 and ki67 were at higher risk to develop invasive cancer after their initial DCIS diagnosis, according to the study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Scientists have been trying to solve the DCIS problem for more than 20 years, Kerlikowske was saying as saying. The new test may be used soon to help women diagnosed with DCIS.

DCIS has no outward symptoms, but a small number of women may have a breast lump and or nipple discharge.

By David Liu