Cancer victims’ relatives ‘more likely to contract disease’

EVEN distant relatives of cancer victims have a higher than average chance of suffering the disease themselves, researchers said yesterday.

A study based in Iceland, where scientists have access to unique family tree data covering the whole population, showed that inheritance played a part in 16 out of 27 cancers. However, even cancers with the strongest family links were not more than twice as likely in first-degree relatives.

The scientists established how often cancers occurred in first to fifth degree relatives of about 32,000 cancer patients over the past 50 years.