Family History of Cancer Needs to Be Updated as You Age
Jul-16-2011

Family history remains one of the best ways to identify people at high risk for breast, prostate and colon cancer, and now new research suggests that updating your doctor between ages 30 and 50 about any close relatives who develop these cancers may lead to lifesaving changes in how and when you are screened.
"Family history is very important, and it can give [individuals] a sense of whether they are at elevated risk for certain types of cancers, and this could impact how they are screened," said study author Dianne M. Finkelstein, of the Massachusetts General Hospital Biostatistics Center in Boston.
Details matter, Finkelstein said. "If anyone in your family gets cancer, you should know the age when they were diagnosed and the original site of the cancer," she said.
"Let's say you are 35, and there is no one with cancer in your family and then you go back to your doctor, and your older brother is diagnosed with colon cancer," she said. "This information changes the doctor's strategy with respect to colon cancer screening and they may find any cancer earlier, which may change the outcome." (Having a close relative with colon cancer increases the risk 2-fold to 6-fold, she and the other researchers noted.)
In the future, family history should become a routine part of the intake process, Finkelstein said.
For the study, reported in the July 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers analyzed data on adults with a personal or family history of cancer or both who were part of a cancer registry called the Cancer Genetics Network. Changes in self-reported family history of cancer occur throughout adulthood, and this increases steeply before the age of 50 for breast and colorectal cancer, and before the age of 60 for prostate cancer.
Specifically, the recommendations for high-risk screening -- based on changes in family history of cancer -- increased by 1.5-fold to 3-fold for colorectal and breast cancer among adults between 30 to 50 years old. The change was less dramatic in regard to prostate cancer.

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