BRCA1 and breast cancer: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy amongst women in Arab countries, with 50% of cases presenting before the age of 50 years.37,38 From 2009 to 2012, El Saghir et al. assessed 250 Lebanese women with breast cancer, considered to be at high risk of carrying mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 tumour suppressor genes, due to presentation of the disease at a young age and/or a positive family history of breast or ovarian cancer.10 The results showed that 14 of 250 patients (5.6%) carried deleterious BRCA mutations (7 BRCA1, 7 BRCA2) and 31 (12.4%) had variants of uncertain significance.