Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer--analyses of cohorts of twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland
- PMID: 10891514
- DOI: 10.1056/NEJM200007133430201
Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer--analyses of cohorts of twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland
Abstract
Background: The contribution of hereditary factors to the causation of sporadic cancer is unclear. Studies of twins make it possible to estimate the overall contribution of inherited genes to the development of malignant diseases.
Methods: We combined data on 44,788 pairs of twins listed in the Swedish, Danish, and Finnish twin registries in order to assess the risks of cancer at 28 anatomical sites for the twins of persons with cancer. Statistical modeling was used to estimate the relative importance of heritable and environmental factors in causing cancer at 11 of those sites.
Results: At least one cancer occurred in 10,803 persons among 9512 pairs of twins. An increased risk was found among the twins of affected persons for stomach, colorectal, lung, breast, and prostate cancer. Statistically significant effects of heritable factors were observed for prostate cancer (42 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 29 to 50 percent), colorectal cancer (35 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 10 to 48 percent), and breast cancer (27 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 4 to 41 percent).
Conclusions: Inherited genetic factors make a minor contribution to susceptibility to most types of neoplasms. This finding indicates that the environment has the principal role in causing sporadic cancer. The relatively large effect of heritability in cancer at a few sites suggests major gaps in our knowledge of the genetics of cancer.
Comment in
-
Cancer--nature, nurture, or both.N Engl J Med. 2000 Jul 13;343(2):135-6. doi: 10.1056/NEJM200007133430210. N Engl J Med. 2000. PMID: 10891523 No abstract available.
-
Cancer, genes, and the environment.N Engl J Med. 2000 Nov 16;343(20):1494-5; discussion 1495-6. doi: 10.1056/NEJM200011163432013. N Engl J Med. 2000. PMID: 11184463 No abstract available.
-
Cancer, genes, and the environment.N Engl J Med. 2000 Nov 16;343(20):1494; discussion 1495-6. N Engl J Med. 2000. PMID: 11184464 No abstract available.
-
Cancer, genes, and the environment.N Engl J Med. 2000 Nov 16;343(20):1495; discussion 1495-6. N Engl J Med. 2000. PMID: 11184465 No abstract available.
-
Cancer, genes, and the environment.N Engl J Med. 2000 Nov 16;343(20):1495; discussion 1495-6. N Engl J Med. 2000. PMID: 11184466 No abstract available.
Similar articles
-
[Environmental and hereditary factors in the causation of cancer].Rev Epidemiol Sante Publique. 2000 Dec;48(6):589-90. Rev Epidemiol Sante Publique. 2000. PMID: 11386211 French. No abstract available.
-
Puberty and genetic susceptibility to breast cancer in a case-control study in twins.N Engl J Med. 2003 Jun 5;348(23):2313-22. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa021293. N Engl J Med. 2003. PMID: 12788995
-
Genetic susceptibility to prostate, breast, and colorectal cancer among Nordic twins.Biometrics. 2005 Mar;61(1):55-63. doi: 10.1111/j.0006-341X.2005.030924.x. Biometrics. 2005. PMID: 15737078
-
Inherited susceptibility to common cancers.N Engl J Med. 2008 Nov 13;359(20):2143-53. doi: 10.1056/NEJMra0802968. N Engl J Med. 2008. PMID: 19005198 Review. No abstract available.
-
Population-based twin registries: illustrative applications in genetic epidemiology and behavioral genetics from the Finnish Twin Cohort Study.Acta Genet Med Gemellol (Roma). 1990;39(4):427-39. doi: 10.1017/s0001566000003652. Acta Genet Med Gemellol (Roma). 1990. PMID: 2102587 Review.
Cited by 1,191 articles
-
The Protective Effect of Polyphenols for Colorectal Cancer.Front Immunol. 2020 Jul 10;11:1407. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.01407. eCollection 2020. Front Immunol. 2020. PMID: 32754151 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Computational Prediction of Probable Single Nucleotide Polymorphism-Cancer Relationships.Cancer Inform. 2020 Jul 15;19:1176935120942216. doi: 10.1177/1176935120942216. eCollection 2020. Cancer Inform. 2020. PMID: 32728337 Free PMC article.
-
SNPs in lncRNA Regions and Breast Cancer Risk.Front Genet. 2020 Jun 30;11:550. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00550. eCollection 2020. Front Genet. 2020. PMID: 32714364 Free PMC article.
-
Research Progress on Slit/Robo Pathway in Pancreatic Cancer: Emerging and Promising.J Oncol. 2020 Jun 29;2020:2845906. doi: 10.1155/2020/2845906. eCollection 2020. J Oncol. 2020. PMID: 32670371 Free PMC article. Review.
-
POLE and POLD1 germline exonuclease domain pathogenic variants, a rare event in colorectal cancer from the Middle East.Mol Genet Genomic Med. 2020 Aug;8(8):e1368. doi: 10.1002/mgg3.1368. Epub 2020 Jun 22. Mol Genet Genomic Med. 2020. PMID: 32567205 Free PMC article.
Publication types
MeSH terms
LinkOut - more resources
-
Full Text Sources
-
Other Literature Sources
-
Medical
-
Miscellaneous