The clinical features of the families and cases studied
| Series (No of cancers) | Dominant inheritance | >1 primary cancer | Endometrial cancer present | Mean age ⩽45 years | Youngest age ⩽45 years | R⩾L | Any patient with ⩾5 adenomas | No of persons with colorectal cancer | No of persons with cancer other than colorectal or endometrial | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For binary variables, the table shows numbers of families/patients with each clinical feature as proportion of total families/patients of that of that type (and percentages); for continuous variables, median and ranges are shown. See Methods for full explanation of variables. | ||||||||||||||||||
| R⩾L = same or greater number of right sided than left sided colorectal cancers in that family; note that this variable cannot simply be equated to the proportion of cancers of each location in the total dataset. | ||||||||||||||||||
| We have already analysed clinical predictors of HNPCC in a larger sample set which included most of these families16 and have also reported most of the features of the MAP cases.9 Comparing the FCC and multiple adenoma cases/families showed only that the former were significantly more likely to have apparently dominant inheritance of disease (p<0.01, Fisher’s exact test), although we cannot exclude the possibility that this difference reflects the inclusion criteria for the study rather than true biological differences. | ||||||||||||||||||
| FCC, family cancer clinic; HNPCC, hereditary non-polyposis colon cancer; MAP, MYH associated polyposis. | ||||||||||||||||||
| HNPCC (43) | 34/43 (82%) | 20/42 (48%) | 18/42 (43%) | 20/42 (48%) | 29/42 (69%) | 27/40 (68%) | 3/42 (7%) | 2.5 (1 to 9) | 1 (0 to 6) | |||||||||
| MAP (17) | 8/17 (47%) | 3/17 (18%) | 0/17 (0%) | 2/17 (12%) | 2/17 (12%) | 12/17 (71%) | 17/17 (100%) | 1 (0 to 3) | 0 (0 to 4) | |||||||||
| Multiads (49) | 38/47 (81%) | 10/47 (21%) | 2/47 (4%) | 9/46 (20%) | 17/46 (37%) | 18/32 (56%) | 49/49 (100%) | 2 (1 to 6) | 0 (0 to 4) | |||||||||
| FCC (150) | 81/137 (59%) | 18/117 (15%) | 11/116 (9%) | 37/119 (31%) | 66/117 (56%) | 57/101 (56%) | 0/150 (0%) | 2 (1 to 6) | 0.5 (0 to 6) | |||||||||