Most cancers due to lifestyle, not bad luck
In a study published in the journal Nature, it was suggested that between 70 and 90 percent of cancer cases are linked to avoidable lifestyle choices like exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals.
Earlier this year a study was published in the journal Science that had suggested that most cancer cases are primarily due to ‘bad luck.’
That conclusion, drawn from researchers at Stony Brook University in New York, adds to ongoing study of the causes of cancer and individuals’ ability to reduce their risk.
The researchers at Johns Hopkins University had made an observation previously after studying the interaction between stem cell divisions and cancer risk in various tissues. They determined that independent of lifestyle choices and known cancer risks, the more those divisions occurred, the higher the individual’s cancer risk would be. The researchers argued that while some cancers were clearly linked to lifestyle choices (like lung cancer and smoking); for other cancers, the relationship between stem cell division and cancer risk still existed regardless of those choices.
‘What they did was interesting, but I was startled by the conclusion,’ Yusuf Hannun, a cancer researcher at Stony Brook University and author of the new paper, said in a Nature news release.
Hannun and his team set out to re-examine that notion by analyzing mathematical models, epidemiological data, and cancer cell mutation patterns. They concluded that mutations during cell division rarely resulted in cancer— even in tissues with relatively high rates of cell division, according to the news release. And, they wrote, in nearly all of the disease instances, some level of exposure to environmental factors, like carcinogens, was necessary to trigger cancer.
