Ovarian Cancer Risk Factors May Include Your Father’s Genes

Fathers may be partially responsible for passing on to their daughters genetic risk factors for ovarian cancer, a new study published Thursday in PLoS Genetics has shown. By looking at the patterns of cancer within families, researchers found that women had a higher risk of ovarian cancer if their paternal grandmothers were afflicted by the disease.

Women with a mutation on a particular gene found on the X chromosome, called MAGEC3, appeared to get ovarian cancer 6.7 years earlier than they would have without the mutation. Among the families involved in the study, the average age that women with the mutation got ovarian cancer was 44.

Women carry two X chromosomes in their cells—one from their mother, the other from their father. “The gene does exist on mom’s chromosomes too,” Kevin Eng, a researcher at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute who was one of the authors of the paper, told Newsweek. But because a woman’s father has only one X chromosome to give to his daughters, a father with mutations in this gene is guaranteed to pass it on.




Source :- newsweek