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Familial pancreatic cancer appearing earlier in ongoing generations
Last Updated: 2006-02-08 9:37:33 -0400 (Reuters Health)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - There is strong evidence for genetic anticipation in familial pancreatic cancer, European researchers report in the February issue of Gut.
As Dr. W. Greenhalf of the University of Liverpool in the UK and colleagues point out, genetic anticipation occurs when a familial cancer strikes earlier in life in successive generations.
To investigate, the team studied 106 families involving 1,223 at-risk individuals. A total of 264 developed familial pancreatic cancer. Median age at death from the disease was 70 years for the first generation, 64 years for the second, and 49 years for the third. Death occurred an average of 10 years earlier in children than parents in the 80 parent-child pairs included in the analysis.
Anticipation in the study may have been due to some type of DNA repair gene mutation, the researchers suggest.
"These findings may assist the creation of more informative family trees for linkage studies," they write. "Finally, the results of this study have immediate implications for genetic counseling and pancreatic cancer screening in high-risk individuals from familial pancreatic cancer families."
In an editorial accompanying the study, Dr. M.M. Lerch of the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt Universitat Greifswald in Germany notes that several researchers are investigating methods for early detection of pancreatic cancer, including imaging techniques and molecular markers. Such tests could then determine which at-risk patients would benefit most from pancreatectomy.
However, given these findings, "whatever screening strategy aimed at preventing pancreatic cancer deaths will ultimately be used, it will have to begin much earlier in individuals' lives to be effective than previously anticipated."
Gut 2006;55:150-151,252-258.
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