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Two tumour genes, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, were recently found to be associated with breast cancer. 'BRCA' is an abbreviation of ‘breast cancer’. Women with a mutation in BRCA-1or BRCA-2 have an 85% greater risk of developing breast cancer.
A familial predisposition is present in up to 30% of patients with gastrointestinal tumours. Within these cases a distinction is made between hereditary gastrointestinal cancer and familial clustering of gastrointestinal cancer. The former group accounts for about 7–10% of all cases of gastrointestinal cancer. In the latter group the precise genetic causes of the familial predisposition are not yet known.
In the case of malignant lymphomas, no genetic predisposition or genetic factors have been demonstrated to date. In some non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, however, chromosomal changes acquired during the patient’s own lifetime have been discovered. Such anomalies are not transmissible from generation to generation, but rather are new and are present only in the patient’s lymphatic tissue. |
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