• Question: What proportion of cancer is caused by viruses? What is the most common cancers in teenagers?

    Asked by chaersue to Amar, Ana, Andrea, Leah, Matt on 11 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Anastasia Wass

      Anastasia Wass answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      I don’t know how many cancers are caused by viruses but the most common cancers in teenagers are tumours in the brain, lymph or bone.
      The lymph and bone are involved in the immune system so it’s thought these are common cancers in young people as you’re immune systems so active when your young.
      Also both the brain and the immune system have recently evolved and are still under alot of pressure to evolve, this means they’ve got more chance of something going wrong.

    • Photo: Andrea Hanvey

      Andrea Hanvey answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Cancers caused by viruses I can think of two, cervical cancer and Kapsoi sarcoma.

      Cervical cancer is caused by various strains of human papilloma virus. Smear tests from cervical screening are now sent to specialist centres, so if a sample has cancerous cells it can be immediately tested for the virus.

      Kapsoi sarcoma caused by human herpes virus 8 usually in immuno suppressed patients eg those with HIV/aids. Lesions grow both on the skin and on internal organs.

      Childhood cancers include leukiamias (blood cancers) , lymphomas and a rare cancer in children under 5 is rentioblastoma a cancer in the eye

    • Photo: Amar Joshi

      Amar Joshi answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      As Andrea said, HPV causes cervical cancer. And the vaccine has been rolled out across schools. There hasn’t been an awful lot of work done looking at viral causes of cancers so there might still be many more that are found.

      We do know that a decent amount of our genome is made up of DNA from viruses that have integrated into our DNA. So who knows…

      Leukemia is a common cancer in children but for teenagers I’m not sure…

    • Photo: Leah Fitzsimmons

      Leah Fitzsimmons answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      Just like gene mutations and lifestyle risks (like poor diet), becoming infected with a virus doesn’t lead directly to cancer, however viruses can contribute to cancers forming and genes in viruses can help cancers to survive, grow and spread. Overall viruses are thought to play a part in up to 20% of all cancers and lots of different viruses have been found to be involved.

      The virus that I work on, Epstein-Barr virus (or EBV), was the first ever virus that was shown to be able to contribute to human cells becoming cancerous – almost exactly 50 years ago. Researchers like me have been trying to understand the interactions between humans and viruses in cancer cells ever since.

      In teenagers cancer is very rare – less than 1% of all cancers occur in people under the age of 20, and the most common types are blood cancers like leukaemia and lymphoma, but young people can get other types of cancer too.

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