Aging, genomic entropy and carcinogenesis: implications derived from longitudinal age-specific colon cancer mortality rate dynamics.

Many types of cancer are intrinsically linked to the process of aging. Aging, from the perspective of the second law of thermodynamics, can be viewed as associated with the inevitable and natural increase in informational entropy of the genome. The molecular biologic basis of increasing genetic informational entropy is the inherent and variable instability of different regions of genome. Colon cancer cells have been shown to have characteristic acquired genetic abnormalities, most commonly, deletions in presumed tumor suppressor genes. Age-specific colon cancer mortality rates in the US from 1958 to 1988 were subjected to longitudinal Gompertzian analysis, a method that may identify and distinguish among genetic, environmental and competitive influences upon mortality. The Strehler-Mildvan modification of the Gompertz relationship between aging and mortality can be used to determine a relative measure of the rate of increase in informational entropy (a reflection of genetic instability) for those genetic factors that are involved in the pathogenesis of colon cancer.