Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Apr 21, 2015; 21(15): 4592-4598
Published online Apr 21, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i15.4592
Individual having a parent with early-onset gastric cancer may need screening at younger age
Hee-Won Kwak, Il Ju Choi, Chan Gyoo Kim, Jong Yeul Lee, Soo-Jeong Cho, Bang Wool Eom, Hong Man Yoon, Jungnam Joo, Keun Won Ryu, Young-Woo Kim
Hee-Won Kwak, Il Ju Choi, Chan Gyoo Kim, Jong Yeul Lee, Soo-Jeong Cho, Bang Wool Eom, Hong Man Yoon, Keun Won Ryu, Young-Woo Kim, Center for Gastric Cancer, National Cancer Center, Goyang 410-769, South Korea
Jungnam Joo, Biometric Research Branch, National Cancer Center, Goyang 410-769, South Korea
Author contributions: Kwak HW collected, analyzed the data, and drafted the manuscript; Choi IJ designed and supervised the study and revised the manuscript; Joo J supervised statistical analysis; Kim CG, Lee JY, Cho SJ, Eom BW, Yoon HM, Ryu KW and Kim YW collected the data and revised the manuscript; all the authors have read and approved the final version to be published.
Supported by National Cancer Center, No.1310280.
Ethics approval: This study has been approved by IRB of National Cancer Center (IRB number: NCCNCS13820).
Informed consent: National cancer center IRB exempted obtaining informed consent from all the individuals due to restrospective study design.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors do not have any financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, and/or acknowledgements.
Data sharing: Dataset are available from the corresponding author at cij1224@ncc.re.kr.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Il Ju Choi, MD, PhD, Center for Gastric Cancer, National Cancer Center, 323 Ilsan-ro, Ilsan dong-gu, Goyang, Gyeonggi 410-769, South Korea. cij1224@ncc.re.kr
Telephone: +82-31-9202282 Fax: +82-31-9202799
Received: November 9, 2014
Peer-review started: November 10, 2014
First decision: November 26, 2014
Revised: January 7, 2014
Accepted: January 30, 2015
Article in press: January 30, 2015
Published online: April 21, 2015
Processing time: 162 Days and 14.9 Hours
Abstract

AIM: To evaluate whether individuals with gastric cancer (GC) are diagnosed earlier if they have first-degree relatives with GC.

METHODS: A total of 4282 patients diagnosed with GC at National Cancer Center Hospital from 2002 to 2012 were enrolled in this retrospective study. We classified the patients according to presence or absence of first-degree family history of GC and compared age at diagnosis and clinicopathologic characteristics. In addition, we further classified patients according to specific family member with GC (father, mother, sibling, or offspring) and compared age at GC diagnosis among these patient groups. Baseline characteristics were obtained from a prospectively collected database. Information about the family member’s age at GC diagnosis was obtained by questionnaire.

RESULTS: A total of 924 patients (21.6%) had a first-degree family history of GC. The mean age at GC diagnosis in patients having paternal history of GC was 54.4 ± 10.4 years and was significantly younger than in those without a first-degree family history (58.1 ± 12.0 years, P < 0.001). However, this finding was not observed in patients who had an affected mother (57.2 ± 10.0 years) or sibling (62.2 ± 9.8 years). Among patients with family member having early-onset GC (< 50 years old), mean age at diagnosis was 47.7 ± 10.3 years for those with an affected father, 48.6 ± 10.4 years for those with an affected mother, and 57.4 ± 11.5 years for those with an affected sibling. Thus, patients with a parent diagnosed before 50 years of age developed GC 10.4 or 9.5 years earlier than individuals without a family history of GC (both P < 0.001).

CONCLUSION: Early-onset GC before age of 50 was associated with parental history of early-onset of GC. Individual having such family history need to start screening earlier.

Keywords: Gastric cancer; Family history; Family member; Age at diagnosis; Screening

Core tip: A family history of cancer is associated with earlier age of onset of several cancers, but not clear in gastric cancer (GC). We found that individuals with a paternal history of GC tended to diagnosis at younger age than those patients without family history, also individuals with a parent diagnosed before 50 years of age developed GC about 10 years earlier than those patients without family history. The finding that patients with a parental history of GC, especially those who had parents with early-onset GC, diagnosed at younger age supports the need for early screening in these individuals.