Familial occurrence of gastric cancer in the 2-year experience of a population-based registry

Abstract

The authors studied the familial occurrence of tumors in 154 individuals with gastric cancer by reviewing the clinical data and the genealogical tree of all patients registered in 1986 through 1987 in the Local Health Care District of Modena, Italy, for cancer of the stomach. Crude and age-adjusted (world population) incidence rates of gastric cancer were 34.0 and 21.4 new cases/100,000/year, respectively, in men, and 24.5 and 10.9 in women, respectively. Among first-degree relatives of the registered patients there were 30 cases of gastric carcinoma versus 15 cases in a control group matched for age and sex (Mantel-Haenszel odds ratio [M-H OR] 3.14, P less than 0.01). This excess of gastric neoplasms was observed in siblings (17 versus 7, M-H OR 4.33, P less than 0.02) but not in parents (13 versus 8, not significant). Besides gastric cancer, there was no significant excess of other type of tumors in case families. The familial occurrence of gastric cancer tended to be more frequent in patients with "diffuse" carcinoma (52%) than in subjects with "intestinal" cancer (33%), although the difference was not statistically significant. In conclusion, the current investigation suggests that a "family history" for gastric neoplasms is usually observed in approximately 10% to 15% of the registered cases. As already described for other common malignancies, therefore, the familial occurrence of gastric carcinoma suggests the existence of a genetic susceptibility to cancer of the stomach, at least in a fraction of these patients.

Increased expression of survivin in gastric cancer patients and in first degree relatives

“…This finding is in keeping with those found in colorectal and oesophageal cancer where survivin expression was demonstrated in adjacent normal tissues (Sarela et al, 2000;Kato et al, 2001). Past epidemiological studies revealed that first-degree relatives have an approximately three-fold increase in risk of developing gastric carcinoma, suggesting the existence of a genetic susceptibility to cancer (Zanghieri et al, 1990;La Vecchia et al, 1992). In this study, we observed an increased survivin mRNA expression in the gastric mucosa of first-degree relatives but not in normal control.…”

Family history and the risk of stomach cancer death in Japan: Differences by age and gender

“…The increased risk was not altered after multivariate adjustment for known or suspected risk factors of the disease. This result is consistent with the previous results of case-control, [11][12][13][14][15] cross-sectional 16,22,23 and prospective studies. 9 Our study more clearly demonstrated that the effect of family history varies in relation to the age and gender of the study participants and the type of affected relatives.…”

Modeling of Influential Predictors of Gastric Cancer Incidence Rates in Golestan Province, North Iran

“…By attention to frequent time of defecation and improper hands washing technique, we can expect emerge of disease related to pollutant microorganism such as gastritis, gastric ulcer or gastrointestinal cancer related to H.pylori infection (Lim et al, 2013). In sub category of family history, gastric cancer history in first-degree relatives was confirmed as a risk factor that is consistent with other studies (Zanghieri et al, 1990;La Vecchia et al, 1992;Foschi et al, 2008;Shin et al, 2010).…”