Breast density is nearly as important as age for determining a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer as per two new studies

William E. Barlow, lead author of one of the studies and a senior investigator at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, says” If we wanted to identify women who were really at high risk for chemoprevention efforts or more intense screening surveillance, then any model that incorporates breast density is going to be better at picking out those women.”

Breast density is a measure of how well tissue can be seen on a mammogram. It is harder for doctors to see tumors in denser tissues such as the milk gland, compared to fatty tissue that is less dense. Both the tumors and the dense tissue appear white on the X-ray.

The information may help better identify women at high risk for the disease, the researchers noted. Experts had speculated that adding newly identified risk factors for breast cancer such as breast density and use of hormone therapy might improve the test’s predictive powers.

After considering the age, the risk for breast cancer was almost four times greater for women with extremely dense breasts than for those whose breasts were the least dense, as per the researchers report

Both studies are in the Sept. 6 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.