Genetic and nongenetic risk factors for childhood cancer

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151 Scopus citations

Abstract

The causes of childhood cancer have been systematically studied for decades, but apart from high-dose radiation and prior chemotherapy there are few strong external risk factors. However, inherent risk factors including birth weight, parental age, and congenital anomalies are consistently associated with most types of pediatric cancer. Recently the contribution of common genetic variation to etiology has come into focus through genome-wide association studies. These have highlighted genes not previously implicated in childhood cancers and have suggested that common variation explains a larger proportion of childhood cancers than adult. Rare variation and nonmendelian inheritance may also contribute to childhood cancer risk but have not been widely examined.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)11-25
Number of pages15
JournalPediatric clinics of North America
Volume62
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

  • Case-control studies
  • Epidemiology
  • Etiology
  • Genome-wide association studies
  • Pediatric cancer

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