Hereditary Cancer: Annotated Bibliography

The majority of the studies done on the link between diet and cancer indicate that there is a relationship between high fat intake and an increased risk

19. Groups of people with high fruit and vegetable intakes often have low rates of cancer.

Cancer is a genetic disease caused by certain changes to genes that control the way our cells function, especially how they grow and divide. Genes carry the instructions to make proteins, which do much of the work in our cells. Certain gene changes can cause cells to evade normal growth controls and become cancer. Genetic changes that promote cancer can be inherited from our parents if the changes are present in germ cells, which are the reproductive cells of the body (eggs and sperm). Such changes, called germline changes, are found in every cell of the offspring. In general, cancer cells have more genetic changes than normal cells. But each person’s cancer has a unique combination of genetic alterations.

Heredity also plays a role in the development of cancer. If a person’s relatives have a history of cancer, then that person has a higher risk of developing cancer. Genetic variations, particularly those influencing how the body responds to carcinogens, may create a greater vulnerability to cancer.

Cancer, medically called ‘tumorigenesis’ (Thaker, Lutgendorf, & Sood, 2007, p.430) occurs when cells in the body orient themselves for malignant growth. Such cells show ‘self-sufficiency in growth signals’, are ‘insensitive to anti-growth signals’ and have ‘limitless replicative potential’ (Thaker, Lutgendorf, & Sood, 2007, p.430). Once a particular set of cells become malignant, the malignancy can spread to other set of cells in different organs due to ‘crosstalk’ between the affected cells and their surrounding ‘tissues’ and ‘micro-environments’(Thaker, Lutgendorf, & Sood, 2007, p.430).

Familial melanoma is a genetic or inherited condition. This means that the risk of having a melanoma can be passed from generation to generation in a family. Ordinarily, each cell has two copies of each gene: one inherited from the mother and one inherited from the father. Familial melanoma follows a dominant inheritance pattern, in which case a mutation happens in only one copy of the gene. As every cell has two copies of each gene, it means that a parent can potentially pass along a copy of his or her normal gene or a copy of the mutated gene. Therefore, a child who has a parent with a mutation has a 50% chance of inheriting that mutation. A related person such as a brother or a parent of the person who has a mutation also has a 50% chance of having the same mutation.

Mouw, T., Koster, A., Wright, M. E., Blank, M. M., Moore, S. C., Hollenbeck, A., & Schatzkin, A. (2008). Education and Risk of Cancer in a Large Cohort of Men and Women in the United States. Plos ONE, 3(11), 1.

Birt, D. F.; Pelling, J. C.; Nair, S., and Lepley, D. Diet intervention for modifying cancer risk. Prog Clin Biol Res. 1996; 395:223-34.

This illustrates how children develop cancer from different types of carcinogenic and genes, this will be used in the introduction of my essay.

Subsequently, each cell that develops from the fertilized egg will receive this mutated gene. He states that for a cancer to manifest, two mutations must occurs. In hereditary cancers, the person inherit one mutant gene. The second mutation occurs as result of a mitotic error during the many cell division that occurs in the person's lifetime. In sporadic cases both mutation occur in the person's lifetime. In sporadic cases both mutation occurs after fertilization an are acquired much later in life. From this Kudson conclude that hereditary cancers manifest at younger age and there is a higher incidence of multiple tumors, where sporadic cancers occur late in the life and usually only a single tumor occurs. The principal causes of cancer appears to be environmental agents. A good example of this is skin cancer. The condition has increased among fair skinned people who expose themselves to too much sunshine, while being very uncommon among dark skinned races (knudson 1971, cited in Ormiston, 1995). Therefore, most genetic alteration are acquired through our life time from environmental carcinogens with only a small percentage been inherited. However, inherited cancers are very important as it appears that the genes responsible for, hereditary cancer maybe the same as those involved in sporadic malignancies.

An ordinary human body contains approximately one trillion cells and precisely 46 chromosomes in each cell. However, the human body can be altered by a genetic mutation. Over the course of history, genetic mutations have had a large impact on the human race. They have brought harm to numerous amounts of people. Cancer, in particular, is one of the most lethal diseases. Cancer begins when a portion of DNA inside a chromosome is damaged, causing a cell to mutate. Then, the mutated cell reproduces multiple times and creates a tumor. Afterwards, cancer cells break off of the tumor, enter the bloodstream, and disperse throughout the body. If the cells break off, the tumor is considered malignant - this type of cancer is very difficult to cure.

“As humans, we should already be eating foods that are similar to a person that has been prescribed a cancer diet” (Lee).

Title: “How to live a healthier lifestyle” by Arianna Lehmann. General Purpose: To inform. Specific purpose: To inform my audience about the most realistic and effective ways to defeat cancer and be healthy. INTRODUCTION I.

Certain genes that were mutated in parent can dramatically increase the risk of developing certain cancer that run in families. For example BRCA gene are tumor suppressor gene a mutation that can occur in one of these gene in parents cause tumor in progeny, as it no longer suppresses abnormal growth and causes cancerous cell proliferation. (Bahcall O et al.,2013)

Evidence shows that some families have increased risk of pancreatic cancer, implying a genetic contribution. 28 The genetic base for this increased risk has not been identified yet, but mutations in BRCA2 and PALB2, among others, are associated with greater risk of disease 37. Only 5-10 % of patients have a family history of the disease. 19 It has been shown that in families with four or more cases of pancreatic cancer the risk of disease is 57 times higher than in families with no history of disease. 19