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Familial Lung Cancer and Aggregation of Smoking Habits: A Simulation of the Effect of Shared Environmental Factors on the Familial Risk of Cancer

¹ Division of Molecular Genetic Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg, Germany and ² Department of Biosciences at Novum, Karolinska Institute, Huddinge, Sweden

Requests for reprints: Justo Lorenzo Bermejo, Division of Molecular Genetic Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Centre, Im Neuenheimer Feld, 580, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. Phone: 49-6221-42-18-05; Fax: 49-6221-42-18-10. E-mail: J.Lorenzo{at}dkfz.de

Background: Tobacco smoking is the principal cause of lung cancer. The risk of lung cancer in the offspring of lung cancer patients is about twice higher than the risk in the general population. The present study investigated the contribution of shared smoking habits to the familial clustering of lung cancer.

Methods: We estimated the relative risk of lung cancer attributable to smoking according to the extent to which smokers transmit their smoking habits to the offspring (heritability of smoking), the prevalence of smoking in the general population, and the risk of lung cancer for smokers compared with nonsmokers.

Findings: The relative risk of lung cancer for the offspring of lung cancer patients attributable to smoking was 1.19 when published data on smoking practice were modeled (i.e., assuming that the heritability of smoking was 0.5, the smoking prevalence 40%, and the odds ratio of lung cancer for smokers versus nonsmokers was 20).

Interpretation: Most familial cases of lung cancer cannot be attributed to shared smoking habits. The example of smoking can be used for other familial cancers, for which no strong environmental risk factors are usually known, to infer the primary role for heritable genes.

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