A study of individuals who have been adopted has identified genetics as the dominant risk factor in ‘familial’ breast, prostate and colorectal cancers.
Researchers at the Centre for Primary Health Care Research at Lund University and Region Skåne in Sweden have presented the new research findings based on studies of population registers.
“The results of our study do not mean that an individual’s lifestyle is not important for the individual’s risk of developing cancer, but it suggests that the risk for the three most common types of cancer is dependent to a greater extent on genetics,” said Bengt Zöller, a reader at Lund University who led the study.
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The risk of cancer in adoptees with at least one biological parent who had had the same cancer was 80-100 per cent higher for breast cancer, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer than for a control group without a biological parent with the same cancer. There was, however, no higher risk for individuals with adoptive parents affected by breast cancer, prostate cancer or colorectal cancer than for a control group. Individuals with a biological parent with cancer also developed the disease at a younger age than those without a biological parent with the same cancer. The age at which an individual developed cancer was not, however, affected by whether an adoptive parent had had the same cancer.
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