Inherited susceptibility and radiation exposure
- Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA (United States)
There is continuing concern that some people in the general population may have genetic makeups that place them at particularly high risk for radiation-induced cancer. The existence of such a susceptible subpopulation would have obvious implications for the estimation of risks of radiation exposure. Although it has been long known that familial aggregations of cancer do sometimes occur, recent evidence suggests that a general genetic predisposition to cancer does not exist; most cancers occur sporadically. On the other hand, nearly 10% of the known Mendelian genetic disorders are associated with cancer. A number of these involve a familial predisposition to cancer, and some are characterized by an enhanced susceptibility to the induction of cancer by various physical and chemical carcinogens, including ionizing radiation. Such increased susceptibility will depend on several factors including the frequency of the susceptibility gene in the population and its penetrance, the strength of the predisposition, and the degree to which the cancer incidence in susceptible individuals may be increased by the carcinogen. It is now known that these cancer-predisposing genes may be responsible not only for rare familial cancer syndromes, but also for a proportion of the common cancers. Although the currently known disorders can account for only a small fraction of all cancers, they serve as models for genetic predisposition to carcinogen-induced cancer in the general population. In the present report, the author describes current knowledge of those specific disorders that are associated with an enhanced predisposition to radiation-induced cancer, and discusses how this knowledge may bear on the susceptibility to radiation-induced cancer in the general population and estimates of the risk of radiation exposure.
- Research Organization:
- National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, Bethesda, MD (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 526027
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-960405--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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