Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter to the Editor
  • Published:

The familial risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma ranks among the highest in the Swedish Family-Cancer Database

Leukemia volume 20, pages 2062–2063 (2006)Cite this article

Despite evidence suggesting a familial clustering of Hodgkin's lymphoma (HL),1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 there is no clear understanding on the relative contribution of genes and shared environmental factors, including childhood infections,7, 8 to familial risk. The rarity of familial HL has hampered a detailed analysis of the familial clustering and it has probably contributed to the variation even in recent risk estimates for first-degree relatives, such as 4.9 from Utah5 and 3.27 from Iceland.4 The Swedish Family-Cancer Database is the largest population-based data set with familial information, covering over 10.5 million individuals. We assess here the familial risks of HL in offspring with a parent or a sibling affected with HL, according to age and sex. This will provide a reliable quantification of the familial risk and suggest plausible modes of inheritance.

The Swedish Family-Cancer Database includes nearly all individuals born from 1932 onward (second generation) with their biological parents (first generation). This Database was linked to the Swedish Cancer Registry for malignancies diagnosed between 1958 and 2002. Socio-demographic information was obtained by linkage to the nationwide censuses. Standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) were used to estimate familial relative risks computed as the ratio of the number of observed cases to the number of expected cases. Confidence intervals were calculated under the assumption of a Poisson distribution. In order to make a proper comparison between risks in individuals with a parent or a sibling affected, we limited the parental age to 70 years (same as in offspring). The Database contained 3238 (1907 males, 1331 females) offspring with HL.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Goldin LR, Pfeiffer RM, Gridley G, Gail MH, Li X, Mellemkjaer L et al. Familial aggregation of Hodgkin lymphoma and related tumors. Cancer 2004; 100: 1902–1908.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Chang ET, Smedby KE, Hjalgrim H, Porwit-MacDonald A, Roos G, Glimelius B et al. Family history of hematopoietic malignancy and risk of lymphoma. J Natl Cancer Inst 2005; 97: 1466–1474.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Paltiel O, Schmit T, Adler B, Rachmilevitz EA, Polliack A, Cohen A et al. The incidence of lymphoma in first-degree relatives of patients with Hodgkin disease and non-Hodgkin lymphoma: results and limitations of a registry-linked study. Cancer 2000; 88: 2357–2366.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Amundadottir LT, Thorvaldsson S, Gudbjartsson DF, Sulem P, Kristjansson K, Arnason S et al. Cancer as a complex phenotype: pattern of cancer distribution within and beyond the nuclear family. PLoS Med 2004; 1: e65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Kerber RA, O'Brien E . A cohort study of cancer risk in relation to family histories of cancer in the Utah population database. Cancer 2005; 103: 1906–1915.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Mack TM, Cozen W, Shibata DK, Weiss LM, Nathwani BN, Hernandez AM et al. Concordance for Hodgkin's disease in identical twins suggesting genetic susceptibility to the young–adult form of the disease. N Engl J Med 1995; 332: 413–418.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Altieri A, Castro F, Lorenzo Bermejo J, Hemminki K . Effects of number of siblings on lymphoma, leukemia and myeloma by histopathology. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2006; 15: 1281–1286.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Gutensohn N, Cole P . Childhood social environment and Hodgkin's disease. N Engl J Med 1981; 304: 135–140.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Hemminki K, Li X, Czene K . Familial risk of cancer: data for clinical counseling and cancer genetics. Int J Cancer 2004; 108: 109–114.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

The Family-Cancer Database was created by linking registries maintained by Statistics Sweden and the Swedish Cancer Registry. This study was supported by the Deutsche Krebshilfe, the Swedish Cancer Society and the EU, LSHC-LT-2004-503465.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Molecular Genetic Epidemiology, German Cancer Research Centre, Heidelberg, Germany

    A Altieri & K Hemminki

  2. Center for Family Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Huddinge, Sweden

    K Hemminki

Authors
  1. A Altieri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. K Hemminki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Altieri, A., Hemminki, K. The familial risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma ranks among the highest in the Swedish Family-Cancer Database. Leukemia 20, 2062–2063 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404378

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.leu.2404378

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links