Bad luck plays a big role in getting cancer, study says

BALTIMORE, Jan. 3 (UPI) - A new study from Johns Hopkins University says many common cancers are usually caused by "bad luck".

"All cancers are caused by a combination of bad luck, environment and heredity, and we have a model that will help determine what proportion of these three factors contribute to cancer development can create," said Bert Vogelstein, MD , professor of oncology at the Clayton School of Medicine Johns Hopkins University.

Scientists already knew that when cells often copy these small mistakes, but this usually harmless error, they can also form the cancer, the researchers found. They observed the stem cells, which can take on this error in many types of cells that make them more likely to turn into cancer cells. The more mistakes add up, the more likely cancer occur.

The researchers found two-thirds of "cancer incidence in adult tissue" such errors in cell division are explained.

"Longevity without cancer in human carcinogens such as tobacco are frequently exposed to them attributed to" good genes ", but the truth is that most of them were just lucky," said Vogelstein.

The researchers say that habits or individual genes, they can not always predict the likelihood of cancer are born early detection methods are the safest way to go.