Gene sequencing of more than 1,000 children and adolescents diagnosed with cancer found that as many as 8.5 percent were born with genes that increase their risk of developing cancer, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
Of the children with cancer risk genes, only 40 percent came from families with a known history of cancer, suggesting that family history was not a strong predictor of childhood cancers, the researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"This paper marks an important turning point in our understanding of pediatric cancer risk and will likely change how patients are evaluated," Dr. James Downing of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, who worked on the study, said in a statement.