BRCA1 and ovarian cancer: One possible explanation for the higher incidence of BRCA1 mutations in the Indian subgroup is that there was a high proportion of women with both breast and ovarian cancer in this subgroup compared with the Chinese or Malay subgroups (14% of total, compared with 1 to 2% among the Chinese and Malay; Table 1) and it is clear from other studies that BRCA1 mutations confer a higher penetrance to ovarian cancer [22].