Norwegian researchers detect cancer risk in unborn children

Pregnant chromosomal defectsPregnant woman. Photo: pixabay.com

Researchers at Haukeland University Hospital have found a recurrence that, already at the foetal stage, can show increased risk of ovarian cancer.
This could lay the foundation for new cancer treatments in the future, wrote VG newspaper.

7% of all girls showed a recurrence that gives two to three times the risk of ovarian cancer in adulthood, showed research discovered by Professor Per Eystein Lønning, and colleague Stian Knappskog, at Mohn Cancer Research Laboratory at Haukeland.

‘It is unlikely that such mechanisms only operate in ovarian cancer.

The research thus gives a new perspective when it comes to understanding cancer risk’, explained Lønning.

Researchers at Radium Hospital and NTNU have also contributed to the study, which included more than 6,000 women. It has received support from, among others, the Cancer Society, and was published on Tuesday in ‘Annals of Internal Medicine’, one of the world’s leading medical journals.

The researchers at Haukeland have concentrated on the breast type 1 gene, also called BRCA1. They found a new type of defect in the gene, which in some cases can be detected in the foetus.

Ovarian cancer is one of the ten most common forms of cancer among women in Norway. Symptoms are vague, making the disease difficult to detect, wrote VG newspaper.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today