If doctors ask  healthy people simple questions about cancers in their families, they can find people who are at increased risk for Lynch syndrome, an inherited condition that greatly increases risk for colorectal and uterine cancer.

Doctors can use a simple set of screening questions available online to pinpoint an individual’s risk before that person ever gets cancer.   The online tool takes less than two minutes to complete.

If family history shows an individual to be at higher risk, genetic testing not only saves lives but is cost-effective.

Once Lynch syndrome is diagnosed, active steps can be taken to prevent Lynch-associated cancers or diagnose them early when they can be cured. Read the rest of this entry »

Although breast cancer has not traditionally been considered one of the cancers associated with Lynch syndrome, evidence is building that there might be a link.

Breast cancer may actually be with in the spectrum of Lynch cancers.

An Australian team reviewing the pathology of breast cancers in women who carried a mutation for Lynch syndrome ( hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer) found that half of the breast tumors were mismatch repair deficient — a hallmark of Lynch cancers. Read the rest of this entry »

Annual colonoscopies for people with Lynch syndrome (HNPCC or hereditary nonpolyposis colon cancer) successfully find cancers at an early stage.

A recent study by the German HNPCC Consortium confirmed the effectiveness of annual colonoscopies to find colorectal cancers at a curable stage.  Regular colonoscopies found early cancers more often than did patient symptoms.

Current recommendations are for surveillance colonoscopies to begin by age 25, be repeated every 1 to 2 years until age 40, and then annually.

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Removing the entire colon (subtotal colectomy) is sometimes recommended for patients with Lynch syndrome when colon cancer is diagnosed.  In addition, some people who have an inherited Lynch mutation have their colons removed to prevent colon cancer.

While subtotal colectomy didn’t reduce deaths from Lynch-related colon cancer, it did cut down on additional colorectal cancer diagnoses and the need for other abdominal surgery. Read the rest of this entry »

People with a mutation in the MSH6 gene, part of the Lynch syndrome, have a greatly increased risk of colorectal, endometrial, and other related cancers.  The cancers can occur in old age, with an increasing risk from age 70 to 80.

About 4 in every 1000 colorectal cancers are due to an inherited mutation in the MSH6 gene.  It accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of Lynch syndrome mutations.

By the time they are 80 years old, men have eight times the risk of getting colorectal cancer and women have 26 times the risk of endometrial cancer — cancer that begins in the lining of the uterus.

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