Ancestry plays more of a role with cancer than most people think
Cancer. It’s a disease that seems to strike at random. While happening at random is often the case for many people, doctors are seeing than in some instances the disease has roots in your DNA.
“It depends on the type of cancer,” said Dr. Christain Shull with the Teton Cancer Institude. “Say breast or colon cancer, perhaps maybe five percent of patients might have a genetic basis. Whereas with ovarian cancer, it’s more like ten percent of patients.”
Genetic research combined with family history research has improved drastically in recent years. In some cases, people can find common themes like cancer in their family history, and geneticists can trace the cause of those cancers to a specific gene.
Dr. Shull is all too familiar with the story as his own family has a history of cancer. “When I was in training at Ohio State University for all of this, I learned about well there was this gene that had been discovered that can cause breast cancer,” said Dr. Shull. “I called my mother and I said ‘You know you should go get tested for this’, and so she went in and it turned out that our family carries this gene.”
Modern medicine is much more adept at finding these “genetic defects” that increase your risk for cancer than it used to. Dr. Shull says that people can get tested for these genes, and encourages people to do so if they find trends in their current or ancestral family.
“There are three red flags (in your family) that people should look for with regards to cancer,” said Dr. Shull. “Young, multiple, and rare. So anytime you have somebody who has cancer and is a young person, that’s unusual. Anytime you have multiple cancers within a family, that’s unusual. Then if you have a cancer that we just don’t see very often, that’s unusual.”
For people interested in learning more about cancer and it’s relationship to family genetics, Dr. Shull will be hosting a free public forum. The meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, October 11 at 7 PM at Mountain View Hospital in Idaho Falls. There will be a question-and-answer session near the end for people to ask questions and address any of their concerns.
