Approximately 10 percent of women with invasive epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) carry deleterious germline mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2. A recent report suggested that BRCA2 related EOC was associated with an improved prognosis, but the effect of BRCA1 remains unclear.

To characterize the survival of BRCA carriers with EOC compared to non-carriers and to determine whether BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers show similar survival patterns.

We pooled data from 26 studies on the survival of women with ovarian cancer. This included data on 1,213 EOC cases with pathogenic germline mutations in BRCA1 (909) or BRCA2 (304) and 2,666 non-carriers recruited and followed for variable times between 1987 and 2010; the median year of diagnosis was 1998.

Five year overall mortality.

The five-year overall survival was 36 percent (95% CI: 34–38) for non-carriers, 44 percent (95% CI: 40–48) for BRCA1 carriers and 52 percent (95% CI: 46–58) for BRCA2 carriers. After adjusting for study and year of diagnosis, BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers showed a more favorable survival than non-carriers (BRCA1, HR=0.78; 95% CI=0.68–0.89, P=2×10⁻⁴; BRCA2, HR = 0.61; 95% CI=0.50–0.76, P=6×10⁻⁶). These survival differences remained after additional adjustment for stage, grade, histology and age at diagnosis (BRCA1, HR=0.73, 95% CI=0.64–0.84, P=2×10⁻⁵; BRCA2, HR = 0.49, 95% CI=0.39–0.61, P=3×10⁻¹⁰).

Among patients with invasive epithelial ovarian cancer, having a germline mutation in BRCA1 or BRCA2 was associated with improved 5-year overall survival.