['Few studies have attempted to characterise genomic changes occurring in hereditary epithelial ovarian carcinomas (EOCs) and inconsistent results have been obtained. Given the relevance of DNA copy number alterations in ovarian oncogenesis and growing clinical implications of the BRCA-gene status, we aimed to characterise the genomic profiles of hereditary and sporadic ovarian tumours.', 'High-resolution array Comparative Genomic Hybridisation profiling of 53 familial (21 BRCA1, 6 BRCA2 and 26 non-BRCA1/2) and 15 sporadic tumours in combination with supervised and unsupervised analysis was used to define common and/or specific copy number features.', 'Unsupervised hierarchical clustering did not stratify tumours according to their familial or sporadic condition or to their BRCA1/2 mutation status. Common recurrent changes, spanning genes potentially fundamental for ovarian carcinogenesis, regardless of BRCA mutations, and several candidate subtype-specific events were defined. Despite similarities, greater contribution of losses was revealed to be a hallmark of BRCA1 and BRCA2 tumours.'] Does dNA copy number profiling reveal extensive genomic loss in hereditary BRCA1 and BRCA2 ovarian carcinomas?