I came across a new report by Cancer Research UK scientists who published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, a study revealing a person’s risk of developing some cancers is affected by how they grew up. My mother died at an early age from stomach cancer and it was interesting to think back on her childhood and how she and her family lived.
They based their report on 22 studies and found that people who were brought up in the poorest housing conditions and those whose fathers had a low-status job, had a higher risk of developing and dying from bowel cancer. This suggests that their poor diet early in life may play a role.
A consistent link consists of stomach cancer and living conditions. They found that people in less advantaged families were more likely to be exposed to a type of bacteria called Helicobacto pylori, which is a common cause of stomach ulcers worldwide which also increases the risk of stomach cancer. It was also found that having poor living conditions as a child were linked to a higher risk of death overall. About half of the studies found a higher risk of adult death from lung cancer when the fathers had a low-income job, prolonged exposure to smoke, more siblings, and lived in worse housing conditions as a child. This may also be that the children from poorer backgrounds are more likely to smoke as adults. There are previous reports that show the chances of a child smoking are much higher if they have at least one parent who smokes. Currently, there are about 1.2 million children in the UK living in poverty and in households where adults smoke.
The father’s occupation was the most common way to measure a child’s living conditions and was used in 18 of the 22 papers. The number of rooms per household, people per room, number of siblings and if the family owned a car, were other measures used.
Lead author and head of Cancer Research UK’s Policy Research Centre, Dr. Jyotsna Vohra, said that children who lead healthy lives with strong family and social support will develop healthier behaviors that are likely to reduce their risk of cancer later in life. It was already known that there was a link between poor living conditions as a child and heart disease, but the research provides more evidence of the link between a child’s surroundings and their risk of developing cancer later in life.
Children need a healthy start in life and can influence their future health and risk of diseases like cancer. More than 4 in 10 cancer cases are preventable and it’s important that Government policies protect future generations from cancer.
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