Familial prostate cancer from the family-cancer database

Thr aim of this study was to calculate the familial risk for prostate cance r (PC) for different family relationships. PC was studied in the Swedish Fa mily-Cancer Database, updated in 1999 to cover individuals born after 1934 with their biological parents. totalling 9.6 million persons. Cancer data w ere obtained from the Swedish Cancer Registry from 1958 to 1996 and include d 1035 PC cases amongst offspring. 188 families were identified where a fat her and a son had PC, giving a familial standardised incidence ratio (SIR) of 2.44 (2.10-2.80). The proportion of familial cancers was 18.2% amongst a ll PC amongst sons. There were only 5 pairs of affected brothers, of which 3 had an affected father. Age of onset modified familial risks modestly; th e highest SIR of 4.43 (1.40-9.17) was for sons diagnosed before 50 years of age when the father was diagnosed before 65 years of age. When analysed ac ross sires, an association of PC in one generation and stomach, liver and s kin cancer and myeloma in another generation was observed. The link was mos t consistent for skin cancer. No maternal site was associated with a son's PC, although the SIR of breast cancer was 1.22 (0.95-1.53). No increased ri sk of malignancy was observed in wives of affected men excluding any shared environmental effect for PC and female cancers. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.