Women are having unnecessary breast-removal surgery after paying for private DNA tests to see if they are at high risk of cancer, scientists have warned.
There has been a surge in demand for genetic testing which can identify if women carry a faulty version of the BRCA genes, often referred to as the “Jolie gene”.
About one in 400 people carry a disease-causing BRCA mutation, which significantly increases the risk of cancer and is the underlying cause of 5-10 per cent of all breast cancer cases.
Those with a positive result can opt to have a mastectomy to remove all breast tissue as a preventative measure, as the actress Angelina Jolie did in 2013.
However, new research by the University of Exeter has suggested