Brain Cancer Risk Factors

Brain cancer risk factors. Brain cancer has been around for twenty years, perhaps because of environmental reasons.Exposure to some carcinogens, including pesticides, increases the risk of brain cancer. As far as mobile phones and mobile masts are concerned, doubts remain.

In many cases, brain cancer occurs in a different place in the body and only afterward reaches the brain. The cause of a brain tumor can thus be another cancer that is sown (breast, lung or colon cancer, malignant melanoma, salivary gland ...). As for tumors that originate in the brain, the so-called primary tumors, the causes are still unclear. One also distinguishes gliomas, brain tumors that originate in the glial cells, cells that support the neurons. Good or malignant gliomas represent 50 to 60% of brain tumors.

Tumors bear a name derived from the original tissue: meninges (tumors that originate in the cells of the surrounding brain surrounding the brain), osteomas (skull bones), pinealomas (pancreatic glands) pituitary adenomas (pituitary tumors), etc.



Although the cause is not really known, some factors are suspected of increasing the risk of developing brain cancer:

• Headache radiation therapy for leukemia.
• Exposure to pesticides (against lice, fleas ...).
• The use of mobile phones (electromagnetic waves).
• Some diseases: epilepsy, rare hereditary disorders (neurofibromatosis, von Hippel-Lindau syndrome, Turcot syndrome).
• Family antecedents of cancer of the nervous system, colon cancer or salivary thyroid cancer.
• Age: Brain tumors usually occur in adults between 40 and 70 years and in children between 3 and 12 years old.
• Men run more risk of aggressive brain cancer, while women are at greater risk of a meningioma, the most common benign tumor.
• Breast cancer and lung cancer increase the risk of developing brain cancer.

In addition, it appears that taking enough vitamins during pregnancy, or even using multivitamins as a dietary supplement, reduces the risk of neuroblastoma, the most common tumor in children, by 30 to 40%. Therefore, during pregnancy, women must ensure a sufficient supply of vitamins.

*Image source : Wikimedia Commons

References :

1. National Cancer Institute
2. E-gezondheid.be
3. American Cancer Society