In this study, we analyzed a population-based cohort of women recruited from primaryhealth care units in Porto Alegre who were referred to genetic cancer risk assessment(GCRA) whenever they had a positive family history for breast, ovarian and colorectalcancer (Palmero et al., 2009).Those women with pedigrees suggestive of a hereditary breast cancer predispositionsyndrome were offered genetic testing for germline mutations in one or more of the mainbreast cancer predisposition genes (BRCA1, BRCA2, TP53,PTEN and CHEK2). Here, BRCA2 is linked to breast cancer.