Study Debunks Ignorant Misconception On Breast Cancer
by Davide E. Williams
Health Business Blog
Mickey passed this item along from Yahoo News (Breast cancer genes can come from father)
A deadly gene’s path can hide in a family tree when a woman has few aunts and older sisters, making it appear that her breast cancer struck out of nowhere when it really came from Dad.
Half of genetic breast cancers are inherited from a woman’s father, not her mother. But unless Dad has female relatives with breast cancer, the faulty gene may have been passed down silently, without causing cancer. (Men can get genetic breast cancer, too, but it’s not common.)
Weitzel said doctors often overlook the genetic risk from the father’s side of the family.
The large majority of genes are on the 22 pairs of chromosomes that one gets equally from both parents. Although breast cancer is expressed almost exclusively in females, it always surprised me when people assumed it was only passed from female to female. No known mechanism of inheritance has such a transmission pattern.
Health Business Blog is a regular contributor to BioHealth Investor
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