Researchers present Friday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas said a new genetic test could predict a woman’s breast cancer risk better than the already-in-use test.

The current test, known as the Gail model, determines a woman’s chance of developing breast cancer by evaluating five personal and family predictors of breast cancer including age, age at first period, number of breast biopsies performed, age at the birth of first child, and number of immediate relative who have had breast cancer.

The new test, called OncoVue, looks at variations in 19 genes associated with breast cancer risk and associates them with information evaluated by the Gail model for a better accuracy of the diagnostic.

OncoVue was tested on 177 women without breast cancer and 169 women diagnosed with breast cancer between 1997 and 1999 in Marin County, California. At the time, the affluent Northern California County had a much higher rate of women with breast cancer and deaths from the disease than the national average.

Results showed that the test was 2.4 times more accurate than the Gail model in identifying which women had breast cancer. It identified 56 cases of breast cancer compared with 37 for the Gail model.

“Put another way, OncoVue found 19 additional cases of breast cancer, translating to a 51% improvement over the Gail model,” says Kathie Dalessandri, MD, a breast cancer researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

The test was developed by InterGenetics Inc. The company hopes to gain FDA approval for it in the near future, says Eldon Jupe, PhD, vice president of the company.