The familiality of primary brain tumors as studied in the Utah Population Database (UPDB)

1526 Background: The UPDB is a unique database linking 2.5 million Utah individuals with genealogical data to 80,000 Utah SEER cancer registry records since 1973. The familial nature of cancer has been well studied using this resource. Here we use similar techniques to investigate 1550 individuals diagnosed with brain tumors. Methods: We estimated the relative risk of brain cancer in relatives of brain cancer cases using internal age- and sex-specific rates of brain cancer estimated from UPDB. We estimated the average relatedness of brain cancer cases (compared to the average relatedness for 1000 matched control groups) using the Genealogical Index of Familiality measure, which extends beyond first degree relatives and looks at all pair wise relationships between cases. We considered all 1550 brain cancers as a group, the subgroup of 364 astrocytomas and the subgroup of 571 glioblastomas. Results: The relative risk for brain cancer in 1st degree relatives of all brain cancer cases is 2.78 (p=5.1xe-7). The...