Most cancers are just bad luck, others from bad genes, environment

Health and Medicine for Seniors

Most cancers are just bad luck, others from bad genes, environment

Best way to eradicate these cancers will be through early detection, when they are still curable by surgery

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Jan. 4, 2015 Two thirds of cancers in adults are just bad luck and the rest are due to inherited genes and environmental factors, according to scientists from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. They created a statistical model that measures the proportion of cancer incidence, across many tissue types, caused mainly by random mutations that occur when stem cells divide.

All cancers are caused by a combination of bad luck, the environment and heredity, and weve created a model that may help quantify how much of these three factors contribute to cancer development, says Bert Vogelstein, M.D., the Clayton Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Cancer-free longevity in people exposed to cancer-causing agents, such as tobacco, is often attributed to their good genes, but the truth is that most of them simply had good luck, adds Vogelstein, who cautions that poor lifestyles can add to the bad luck factor in the development of cancer.

The implications of their model range from altering public perception about cancer risk factors to the funding of cancer research, they say.

If two-thirds of cancer incidence across tissues is explained by random DNA mutations that occur when stem cells divide, then changing our lifestyle and habits will be a huge help in preventing certain cancers, but this may not be as effective for a variety of others, says biomathematician Cristian Tomasetti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

We should focus more resources on finding ways to detect such cancers at early, curable stages, he adds.

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Most cancers are just bad luck, others from bad genes, environment