Ashkenazi Jews and cancer

Jews have a significant hereditary component that increases their risk for colorectal cancer:

According to an Omaha expert on hereditary cancers, descendants of Jews from Eastern Europe or Germany may have one of the highest lifetime risks for colorectal cancer of any ethnic group.

Dr. Henry Lynch, president of the Hereditary Cancer Institute at the Creighton University School of Medicine, has studied cancer rates among people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.

In research recently published in the journal Familial Cancer, Lynch found that such Jews have a lifetime risk of colorectal cancer of about 9 percent to 15 percent. That's two to three times the estimated 5 percent to 6 percent lifetime risk for the general American population.

As a result of those findings and other work that shows a significant hereditary component to colorectal cancer, Lynch advised more intensive colorectal cancer screenings.

He recommended that people with close relatives who have had colorectal cancer, particularly those of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, begin colonoscopies at age 35 and repeat every three years.

In the news:

Hereditary Cancer Expert Links Colorectal Cancer and Jewish People

Ashkenazi Jews' colon cancer risk highest