Jonathan Wilhoite Blog: Family Health: Cancer Passed On Through Genetics

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Family Health: Cancer Passed On Through Genetics

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The genes in your body manage how the cells work. They are also in charge of the cells’ growth and division. Changes in one or more genes in a cell might possibly result to cancer.

These changes are known as faults or mutations. It is known that this disease is the effect of lifestyle choices and rarely related to genes. However, genes can be the cause of these irregularities. With this in mind, it’s highly probable to inherit the disease from parents and grandparents. It is likely to be passed on through genes.

These changes result to cancer if there six or more faults in a cell. This will lead to abnormal functions such as uncontrollable growth and division of cells. It usually happens as people reach a certain age. When people get older, there are random mistakes when a cell divides. If you get exposed to sunlight or cigarette smoke, it increases the occurrence of these changes.

The gene changes can be cancerous however, it does not involve all body cells nor are they inherited. These cannot be transferred on to the offspring. Even though cancer is such a common disease, only a small number of all cancers are inherited.

Inherited cancer genes are the faulty genes that raise the chances of passing the disease from parent to offspring. This occurs when an egg or sperm cell contains faulty genes. If this is the case, inheriting a copy of the genes means that it is not capable of repairing damaged cell DNA. These can then turn into cancerous cells.

The genes are inherited from both parents. The child has 1 in 2 chance of getting the disease if a both parents have gene faults.

Cancers caused by gene changes due to aging are more common than the cancers caused by inherited faulty genes. Most cases of cancer progress because of environment factors combined with chance. Although this is the case, around 5-10% of all the disease cases involve people with inherited genetic changes. This definitely increases the risk of cancer.

In order to be certain of your condition, there are tests for gene faults that can help identify the risks for breast, bowel, ovarian, womb, and prostate cancer. For rare gene faults, test for kidney, skin, and thyroid cancer, and even a type of eye cancer called retinoblastoma are also available. There is no final word yet when gene tests for other types of cancers will be made available but research is consistently being conducted.

Predictive genetic testing is capable of showing if there are distinctive changes in your genes, not the presence of cancer. This test can give you possibilities about what may happen, but this cannot give you a definite answer as to what will happen.

These tests may not be perfect and interpretations may vary. However, you always have the option to consult a reputable genetics counselor. They should be able to set the right expectations from the test results.

Who are the candidates for testing? Based from Cancer Research UK, the situations indicated below should be indicative of a cancer history in the family:

Two or more close relatives on one side of the family have had the disease.

The family has relatives that have had the same type of cancer or different type of cancers that can be caused by the same gene fault

The relatives were below the age of 50 when the cancer started manifesting.

If a family member has a gene fault discovered through genetic testing.

If you are high at risk, according to the American Cancer Society, the most effective way to combat the disease is to do the simple tasks indicated below: