Genetic And Family Factors Influence Onset Of Mesothelioma

March 16, 2012 - PRLog -- New studies of entire family groups try to discover why certain individuals are more prone to asbestos-related disease while others appear to be immune despite receiving the same level of exposure. One possible answer is that a family member may inherit a genetic propensity that can be triggered by the ingestion of asbestos fibres.

Throughout most of the twentieth century in the north of England, Midlands and the south coast shipyards, many thousands were employed in the manufacturing, engineering and construction industries where asbestos materials were used who had little or no asbestos awareness of the deadly health risks of breathing in the fibre dust every day.

Once embedded in the lung linings, mesothelioma or asbestosis disease was the almost certain outcome although the first signs of mesothelioma or asbestosis symptoms would not emerge for between 15 to 50 years later. At an advanced stage of the disease, once diagnosis was confirmed, survival is often less than 6 months.

Previous investigations suggest a number of determining factors, including :
Family members who had developed mesothelioma were often younger when first exposed to asbestos because cells in younger age groups possess a higher vulnerability to carcinogenic (cancer-causing) agents.
A greater genetic vulnerability to carcinogenic agents by mesothelioma patients who were also diagnosed with a different type of cancer at the same time as being diagnosed for mesothelioma.  
Patients exposed to asbestos with a parent or direct family member who received a cancer diagnosis.
The children of those patients with a mesothelioma diagnosis were seven times more likely to be diagnosed with cancer, which could even be more aggressive than the parent’s condition.
Genetic  mutations that appear to also increase susceptibility to a range of other cancers.
An identical genetic mutation in about 25 per cent of patients with mesothelioma but without a family history of the disease.

Research suggests that a family aggregation of mesothelioma cancer would give strong support to genetic factors influencing to an unknown degree the susceptibility to asbestos exposure and the eventual onset of asbestos-related disease.

The number of mesothelioma deaths continues to rise each year despite the ban on asbestos use, introduced from the mid 1970s but which did not extend to white asbestos until 1999. By 2004, more than 1 per cent of all UK malignant cancer deaths were caused by mesothelioma.

Each year, 2,000 cases of mesothelioma continue to be diagnosed. As a result, the number of asbestosis claim cases has more than doubled from 574 in 2007 to 1,164 in 2010.

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