A report published in the Journal of American Medical Association found that many Hispanic women "carry a gene mutation that gave many Jewish women a high risk of breast cancer".
Some 3,000 breast cancer patients across California were involved in the study covering the period 1996 to 2005.
It pointed out that the mutation called BRCA1, occurred in 3.5 percent of Hispanic women compared to 1.3 percent among black women and 0.5 percent in Asian-American females.
Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the U.S., with an estimated 178,500 women diagnosed with the disease and 40,500 deaths annually.
