Bowel cancer risk factor found

MELBOURNE: A common gene mutation, previously thought of as harmless, can increase a person's risk of bowel cancer, a new study has revealed. Researchers in Australia have found that people with the defect and who had a cancer predisposing abnormality were three times more likely to develop bowel cancer, the latest edition of the 'International Journal of Cancer' reported. "What we discovered is that people who carry two copies of the gene mutation known as H63D, and who also have the gene mutations linked to bowel cancer, are three times more likely to develop bowel cancer. "As well, in those people, the cancer develops on average six years earlier," lead researcher Professor John Olynyk of the Western Australian Institute forMedical Research said. The study looked at more than 350 people from Australia and Poland who carried a specific gene mutation associated with a type of bowel cancer known as hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer.

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