“What your family history says about your risk of cancer”

You inherit all good and bad genes from your parents and carry it through generations. Genes are the instructor to the cell, the building block of the body that sometimes changes and cannot give the exact instructions; this change is termed as gene mutation. And cancer develops due to these gene mutations. An inherited mutation is an altered gene passed through either of your parents to you. Although, not all inherited mutation causes cancer.

Though we as an individual may be on a minimal risk of having cancer, your family history says a lot about your risk of having cancer in your life span.

Cancer is said to run within the family if:

• Multiple cancers on the same side of the family, such as 2 or more breast/ ovarian/ prostate/ pancreatic cancer, or 2 or more colorectal/ endometrial/ ovarian/ gastric/ pancreatic/ other cancers, or 2 or more melanoma/ pancreatic cancer.
• Breast/ colorectal/ endometrial cancer at the young age i.e. at the age of 50 or younger.
• A rare presentation of cancer such as ovarian cancer, male breast cancer/ Triple-negative breast cancer, colorectal cancer with abnormal MSI/IHC/ MSI associated histology, endometrial cancer with abnormal MSI/IHC, 10 or more gastrointestinal polyps.

Cancer can be inherited from either of your parent’s side.

The firmness of your family history depends on:

• Who in your family has had cancer
• How old they were at diagnosis

The same or related types of cancer, within more than one number of relatives, and diagnosed at a younger age, the stronger the family history is. This means that the inherited faulty gene has caused cancer.

Although it is important to remember that cancer is common in older people over the age of 60 and is rare in young people. Hence, cancer in older people is less likely to be hereditary cancer.

The family history enables to assess whether you are at risk of having hereditary cancer.

The advancing introduction of new cancer genes enables us to test for cancer-causing mutations in those genes. Test like Myriad MyRisk hereditary cancer is a most comprehensive Hereditary Cancer Panel of detecting the risk of 8 hereditary cancers. This also provides you specific medical management recommendations for both patients who test positive or negative, along with a lifelong follow-up, as in if any new information regarding your test result becomes available Myriad will share an updated report. This would help you and your healthcare professional to take preventive actions to reduce the risk of developing cancer.

As in medical science, it is said, the early the detection, the most curable is your disease. Hence, knowing your family history, it enables you and your health professionals to take the primitive measures at the earliest to possibly delay, or even prevent the development of certain cancers.