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Higher risk of cancer in the relatives of sarcoma patients

Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 3:35 pm
by Olga
I have recently came across the article from Canada that reviews if there is higher cancer risk for the rest of members of the family (first degree relatives) when someone is already Dx with the soft tissue sarcoma.

"Clustering of cancer among families of cases with Hodgkin Lymphoma (HL), Multiple Myeloma (MM), Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL), Soft Tissue Sarcoma (STS) and control subjects.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19250521
The relative risk for the relatives of the people with sarcoma is higher then controls by 1.3 so I would advocate to be more attentive to the yearly mammograms, check ups and any suspicious symptoms we might have.
It is unclear if this is caused by the commonly shared genes set so the same combination that caused sarcoma in the patient in the first place might cause the cancer in the other family member or the fact that we share the same environment as a family, but I think it is worth being aware of.