Our cohort consisted of tissue samples from 22 women who had undergone reduction mammoplasties, 27 women carrying a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation or had a strong family history of breast cancer that was not attributed to known risk genes (who had risk reduction prophylactic mastectomies), and 6 women who had undergone contralateral mastectomies from BRCA1 mutation carriers that had breast cancer in one breast and had the second breast removed to reduce the risk of further tumors (Fig. 1). This evidence concerns the gene BRCA1 and breast carcinoma.