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Heritable breast cancer in twins
T M Mack et al
Researchers have found that women who have an identical(monozygotic) twin sister with breast cancer are four times more likely than average to go on to develop it themselves. Not only is this higher than was previously thought, but much higher than even their 100% genetic identity could predict. This increase in risk cannot be attributed to the common environment, to factors that cumulate with age, or to any autosmoal dominant mutations. The genotype more plausibly consists of multiple co-existing susceptibility alleles acting through heightened susceptibility to hormones and/or defective tumour suppression.

HBV, HCV and the role of acupuncture in South Korea
H R Shin et al
Liver cancer mortality in South Korea is one of the highest in the world at 30.3 and 9.7 per 100 000 for men and women, respectively. Both hepatitis B and C viruses infection are strong risk factors for the development of liver cancer. This cross-sectional study evaluated the prevalence of and the risk factors for hepatitis C and B viruses among 700 adults in South Korea and found that seropositivity for hepatitis C virus antibody was more than double that for hepatitis B surface antigen and that acupuncture is an important cause of this.

Abnormal mitosis in head and neck tumours
D Gisselsson et al
Head and neck tumours typically exhibit complex chromosomal abnormalities, but the underlying mutational events are not well understood. This study shows that some of the genomic instability in these cancers can be related to telomere dysfunction. The authors suggest that this telomere dysfunction triggers chromosome instability, and leads to an accumulation of mutations that favour tumour progression.

Tuesday, 23 July 2002
Doctors asked to 'double' check family breast cancer link

Tuesday, 9 July 2002
Triple risk for smokers with faulty gene

Tuesday, 25 June 2002
Lung cancer deaths in the UK are set to tumble

Aspirin may reduce the risk of lung cancer in women