Today’s news is filled with sound bytes from a study out of Harvard and Boston Children’s Hospital about Down Syndrome and its relationship to cancer. It is important information, because the science behind the seeming lack of solid tumors seen in people with Down Syndrome is now being cracked open.

From the US News & World Report:

Scientists have long suspected that such genetic benefits might accrue from having an extra chromosome 21. A recent study found that people with Down syndrome are only about one-tenth as likely to get a solid-tumor cancer as are people without the syndrome.

A tumor needs veins and arteries to nourish its rapid growth. So tumors fashion a haphazard cluster of new vessels that mimic a legitimate body process called angiogenesis. The late Judah Folkman of Harvard Medical School in Boston saw angiogenesis as the Achilles’ heel of tumors and suspected that cancer suppression in people with Down syndrome could stem from extra copies of propitious genes on chromosome 21 that thwart angiogenesis.

In the new study, Folkman’s colleagues tested the antitumor effect of RCAN1, alsocalled DSCR1. The researchers compared two sets of mice, some with a third copy of the RCAN1 gene and some with the usual pair. When the mice were surgically implanted with melanoma or lung tumors, animals making the additional RCAN1 protein had less than half as much tumor growth and substantially fewer blood vessels around those tumors as did mice with a normal RCAN1 complement.

However, what every news story that I’ve looked at so far has failed to mention is that Individuals with Down syndrome have a 15 to 20 times greater risk of developing leukemia. The majority of cases are categorized as acute megakaryoblastic leukemia, and often occurs within the first 3 years of life.

Leukemia is different from solid tumors, of course, but I would at least think that should be mentioned instead of making it seem that Down Syndrome seemingly makes a person cancer free. It’s called good reporting, and it doesn’t take much to include a few sentences about this, and if it in someway relates to this new revelation.

Also important to note that individuals with Down syndrome have a higher incidence of a number of medical problems, and that you just can’t sift out a resistance to solid malignant tumors from the whole picture. I’m sure the scientists who published this paper aren’t doing that, but the media reporting on it has omitted mention of that. In addition to a very high risk of leukemia, and developmental problems, up to 50% of individuals with Down syndrome are born with congenital heart defects. Alzheimer’s disease is another issue–while estimates do vary, about 25% of those with Down syndrome over the age of 35 will develop the clinical signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s-type dementia.

So does any of this tie together? Maybe or maybe not, but it would be nice if at least one story mentioned the high rate of medical problems, and especially, while there may an inborn resistance to solid tumors, leukemia rates are much higher than the general population.