Mammogram risks?
Stuff has excellent coverage of a new research paper finding possible risks of mammograms in women under 30 with rare mutations in two specific genes involved in DNA repair (including repair to DNA damage caused by X-rays).
It’s important to stress that the risk findings don’t apply to people in general: X-rays do increase cancer risk for everyone, but only by a tiny amount. A study published in June this year caused concern by estimating that for every 10,000 CT scans in kids under 10 years old, two cancers would be caused. That’s a 2 in 10000 additional risk per scan: the additional risk estimated in the breast cancer study is hundreds of times larger.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »