A possible cause of cancer in Kate Middleton has been named: a mutation in genes

She has been linked to her unconfirmed Jewish roots

After the news appeared about Kate Middleton being diagnosed with cancer, the world media are wondering what the cause of her cancer is. Judging by the fact that it was discovered during a planned abdominal operation, doctors assume that it is most likely ovarian cancer.

The tabloids are spreading the news that Princess Kate may be a carrier of the same mutation as the American actress Gilda Redner, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the age of 43. Along the way, a lot of information has again appeared in the media that Kate Middleton has Jewish roots. And although several years ago the chairman of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Doreen Berger, officially stated that there is not a single purebred Jew in Kate’s family, the rumors do not subside.

…In the mid-90s of the last century, the role of mutations in the occurrence of breast and ovarian cancer was discovered. BRCA mutations today account for 85% of hereditary breast cancers. The risk of developing cancer in such people increases greatly with age: by the age of 70 it reaches 65-70%, and most often they develop severe, so-called. triple negative cancer. But experts are especially concerned about the situation with ovarian cancer, which ranks first in the mortality structure among all “female cancers” due to the fact that it is the worst diagnosed. And in some cases, it is only discovered during surgery to remove what was initially diagnosed as a cyst – the kind of surgery the Princess of Wales apparently underwent.

According to statistics, 1 in 40 Ashkenazi Jews is a carrier of dangerous mutations in the BRCA gene. But most often, such mutations, says American geneticist Dmitry Prus, leave a strong mark on the family history of the disease. That said, the BRCA2 mutation in Ashkenazi Jews is known to be somewhat limited in potency and have a later typical age of diagnosis. “Kate’s mother is 69 years old, and her mother died at 71… So it is possible that the mutation could have hidden unnoticed in recent generations,” says the geneticist.

Officially, nothing is known about the details of the diagnosis, but the general theme “after abdominal surgery it turned out that the tumor was malignant” most likely describes ovarian cancer or a neuroendocrine tumor of the pancreas, experts say. The “Ashkenazi” mutation in BRCA1/2 refers to three different mutations with a combined frequency of approximately 2.5% in Ashkenazi Jews. For comparison: in other nations these mutations do not occur more often than in 0.5% of the population. “But, having delved into this hypothesis, I was forced to close it. By the way, one of the so-called Ashkenazi mutations predominates in the spectrum of BRCA1 mutations among the Slavs – in fact, it came to the Jews several hundred years ago from the Slavs of Poland – but its absolute frequency among the Slavs is still lower,” says the geneticist.

And although no one has confirmed the information about the mutations, it should not be written off for one reason: cancer was diagnosed at a young age.