Some months ago I wrote about breast cancer survivors with genetic mutations sharing results with their children. This post is a follow up to that article.
Some months ago I wrote about breast cancer survivors with genetic mutations sharing results with their children. This post is a follow up to that article.A recent study of parents who underwent genetic testing for mutations finds that most parents do share their findings with their children. The results of the report were shared in the online January 9th issue of journal Cancer
Dr. Angela Bradbury, of the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and her colleagues reported that twenty-nine percent of the parents tested were found to have a BRCA gene mutation associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
Many of the parents in the study tended to share their genetic test results, be they positive or negative, with at least one of their children. Of the 505 children, 334 (66 percent) were informed about the findings of their parents’ tests.
Parents were most likely to share their test results with older children. Yet, about half of children ages 10 to 13, and some children even younger were told about the results of thew genetic testing. The researchers also found that parents were more likely to tell their children about negative test results, especially if the child was a girl.
In general, most of the children were not upset when their parents’ shared their genetic test results. However, as would be expected,they were more likely to be upset when a genetic mutation was detected.
Children younger than ten tended to be more upset than older children.
