Ishibe N, Kelsey K T
Department of Epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Cancer Causes Control. 1997 May;8(3):504-13. doi: 10.1023/a:1018421724776.
Epidemiologic evidence on the relation between genetic susceptibility and cancer is reviewed. Traditional epidemiologic studies have identified various exposure-related associations with cancer. Most conventional approaches to environmental and occupational cancer have not been able to address specifically the issue of individual susceptibility to the action of carcinogens. However, with the recent rapid advances in molecular biology, novel approaches to define the role of genetic susceptibility in epidemiologic studies of cancer etiology have emerged. Molecular epidemiology has begun to develop within the broad field of cancer research. Here, we provide a description of the current framework of this research. Ongoing studies of the associations of inheritable polymorphisms in metabolic genes with specific carcinogen exposures reflect the most active area of research. Future efforts will include the examination of inherited variation in DNA repair. Methods are being developed now that will allow for the application of linkage analysis to the problem of gene-environment interaction in cancer. These approaches hold considerable promise for defining the nature of genetic susceptibility to exposure-related cancers.
本文综述了关于遗传易感性与癌症关系的流行病学证据。传统流行病学研究已确定了各种与癌症相关的暴露关联。大多数针对环境和职业性癌症的常规方法未能专门解决个体对致癌物作用的易感性问题。然而，随着分子生物学最近的快速发展，在癌症病因学的流行病学研究中定义遗传易感性作用的新方法已经出现。分子流行病学已在癌症研究的广泛领域内开始发展。在此，我们描述了这项研究的当前框架。正在进行的关于代谢基因中可遗传多态性与特定致癌物暴露关联的研究反映了最活跃的研究领域。未来的工作将包括对DNA修复中遗传变异的研究。目前正在开发一些方法，这些方法将允许把连锁分析应用于癌症中基因 - 环境相互作用的问题。这些方法在确定与暴露相关癌症的遗传易感性本质方面具有很大的前景。
