Question about family genetics and pancreatic cancer

Posted by lightandhope @lightandhope, Jan 30 1:50pm

Hi,

My partner's grandfather died of pancreatic cancer in his early 80s. Now, his father, 72 yo, is about to be given hospice care for pancreatic cancer. I am concerned about my partner, who will turn 40 this year. He has been recommended a scan of his pancreas every 2 years because of family history. Both he and his dad have tested negative for the presence of known genes for this cancer.

Does my partner's family history of this cancer mean that he his very likely going to get it? Do people with strong family history dodge this cancer sometimes? Any input on this is appreciated.

Thank you!

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@lightandhope

Thank you so much again for the informative post. Unfortunately my partner's dad passed away recently after almost 3 years post PC dx. We will be on top of this even though my is partner young- just shy of 40. I like your suggestion on having baseline bloodwork numbers as early as possible. He already has started getting imaging of pancreas done once every two years.

While I see a lot of info on the outcomes of typical late stage detection of PC that contributes to its viciousness, I don't see much info on outcomes of those at high-risk who started surveillance earlier with no evidence of disease and with no symptoms, like my partner, due to reasons such as genetic markers, fam history and such.

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Hi @lightandhope ,

Does this study address what you were looking for regarding outcomes from early screening?

Abstract: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29803839/
"Conclusions: In a long-term (16-year) follow-up study of individuals at high-risk for PDAC, we found most PDACs detected during surveillance (9/10) to be resectable, and 85% of these patients survived for 3 years. "

Full paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6120797/
Table 2 in this paper is interesting -- seems to show a lot of long-term survivors.

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@markymarkfl

Hi @lightandhope ,

Does this study address what you were looking for regarding outcomes from early screening?

Abstract: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29803839/
"Conclusions: In a long-term (16-year) follow-up study of individuals at high-risk for PDAC, we found most PDACs detected during surveillance (9/10) to be resectable, and 85% of these patients survived for 3 years. "

Full paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6120797/
Table 2 in this paper is interesting -- seems to show a lot of long-term survivors.

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Sorry for the very late response. I am just checking this message board after a long break. I am going to read it carefully as it is dense for me. However, the topline seems really hopeful!!

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