Survival rate can be inherited!

PARIS: Children stricken at some point in their lives with the same cancer as their parents are also likely to share a similar rate of survival, according to a study.

The study released yesterday is based on a database including three million families and a million cancer patients in Sweden, found an increased risk of an early death in second-generation patients with breast, lung, prostate and colon cancer.

The same may hold for other cancers as well, the researchers said, but only these four were present in sufficient numbers to be statistically significant.

It has long been known that family history is a risk factor for many forms of cancer, but this is the first evidence extending that filial bond to the child's chances of living with or overcoming the disease.

While environmental factors could not be ruled out entirely, the findings strongly suggest that genetic factors are at work.

Among the offspring of people who had died within 10 years of being diagnosed, the increased risk compared to cohorts whose parents has survived longer was 75 per cent for breast cancer, 107 per cent for prostate cancer, 44 per cent for colorectal cancer, and 39 per cent for lung cancer.

The findings, published in the British journal The Lancet , suggest that "cancer specific-survival of a patient can be predicted from previous parental survival from cancer at the same site," the authors conclude.

The team of researchers, led by Linda Lindstrom of the Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm, also say that the parent-child link could be a useful guide for treatment as well.