Getting Cancer is Like Losing a Lottery,Courtesy Random Gene Mutations

Nearly two-thirds of adult cancers occur due to random DNA mutations or in colloquial terms, 'sheer bad luck'.

New research from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine shows just about one-third of adult cancers are attributable to inherited genetic defects or lifestyle. Random mutations in genetic code where one letter in the DNA sequence is replaced by another resulting in errors cell divisions, cause the majority of cancers Xinhua reports.

"All cancers are caused by a combination of bad luck, the environment and heredity, and we've created a model that may help quantify how much of these three factors contribute to cancer development," said Bert Vogelstein at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in a news release.

According to The Irish Times, researchers studied 31 cancers in the body and correlated increased cancer risk to errors in tissue-making stem cells which replicate during division. Frequent divisions implied increased risk.

"Our study shows, in general, that a change in the number of stem cell divisions in a tissue type is highly correlated with a change in the incidence of cancer in that same tissue," Vogelstein said citing colon tissue as an example. Cells in the colon undergo four times more cell divisions than small intestine. Cancer of colon is more common than cancer of small intestine, he said.

However researchers cautioned that lifestyle factors can add to the bad luck.

"This study shows that you can add to your risk of getting cancers by smoking or other poor lifestyle factors. However, many forms of cancer are due largely to the bad luck of acquiring a mutation in a cancer driver gene regardless of lifestyle and heredity factors. The best way to eradicate these cancers will be through early detection, when they are still curable by surgery," Vogelstein said.