Is cancer hereditary?

There are some clinical tumors that are hereditary, which is a genetic predisposition to cancer caused by a susceptibility gene. In particular, malignancies like germ cell mutations are hereditary. In clinical practice, there are also familial breast and ovarian cancers, which may be caused by changes in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, resulting in a high incidence of familial breast or ovarian cancers. There are also some colon tumors, which may have a high prevalence of colon polyps, and this high prevalence does have the possibility of malignant transformation in the clinic. Therefore, we must pay attention to the similarity of some diseases in the clinical process, and there are indeed some diseases that have a certain family aggregation. There is another kind of family aggregation which is not related to heredity, most of them are due to the similar living environment and similar eating habits of family members, and they are basically the same in their life, so there is a relatively consistent environment for acquiring diseases, so there may be a family aggregation of certain diseases. For example, in the case of esophageal cancer and gastric cancer, it is possible that a family all has certain food preferences, or the intake of fresh vegetables and fruits in this area is reduced, and more pickled foods are eaten, and it is possible that similar diseases of the stomach or esophagus may occur. There is a correlation between the development of nasopharyngeal cancer and betel nut. In a region or a family that likes to chew betel nut, chewing betel nut does have a certain possibility of high incidence of nasopharyngeal cancer. It is not a genetic factor, but mainly related to lifestyle and environmental factors, so it is important to distinguish whether it is genetic or environmental lifestyle.