Inequality in genetic cancer risk suggests bad genes rather than bad luck

Nature Communications
Mats Julius Stensrud, Morten Valberg

Abstract

Heritability is often estimated by decomposing the variance of a trait into genetic and other factors. Interpreting such variance decompositions, however, is not straightforward. In particular, there is an ongoing debate on the importance of genetic factors in cancer development, even though heritability estimates exist. Here we show that heritability estimates contain information on the distribution of absolute risk due to genetic differences. The approach relies on the assumptions underlying the conventional heritability of liability model. We also suggest a model unrelated to heritability estimates. By applying these strategies, we describe the distribution of absolute genetic risk for 15 common cancers. We highlight the considerable inequality in genetic risk of cancer using different metrics, e.g., the Gini Index and quantile ratios which are frequently used in economics. For all these cancers, the estimated inequality in genetic risk is larger than the inequality in income in the USA.

References

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Citations

Jan 18, 2018·BMC Public Health·Morten ValbergOdd O Aalen
Jun 7, 2019·Nature Communications·M Gabriela M GomesChristian Lienhardt
Feb 9, 2019·British Journal of Cancer·Puya GharahkhaniStuart MacGregor
May 12, 2020·Statistics in Medicine·Janez StareNina Ružić Gorenjec
Nov 27, 2020·IScience·Justine BoutryFrédéric Thomas

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