What are the risk factors for rhabdomyosarcoma?

A risk factor is anything that affects the chance of having a disease such as cancer. Different cancers have different risk factors. For example, smoking is a risk factor for several types of cancer in adults.

Lifestyle-related risk factors such as body weight, physical activity, diet, and tobacco use play a major role in many adult cancers. But these factors usually take many years to influence cancer risk, and they are not thought to play much of a role in childhood cancers, including rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS).

No environmental factors (such as exposures during the mother's pregnancy or in early childhood) are known to increase the chance of getting RMS.

Age and gender

RMS is most common in children younger than 10, but it can also occur in teens and adults. It is slightly more common in boys than in girls.

Inherited conditions

Some people inherit a tendency to develop certain types of cancer. The DNA we inherit from our parents may have certain changes that account for this tendency. Some rare inherited conditions increase the risk of RMS (and usually some other tumors as well).

• Members of families with Li-Fraumeni syndrome are more likely to develop sarcomas (including RMS), breast cancer, leukemia, and some other cancers.
• Children with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome have a high risk of developing Wilms tumor, a type of kidney cancer, but they may also develop RMS.
• Neurofibromatosis type 1, also known as von Recklinghausen disease, usually causes multiple nerve tumors (especially in nerves of the skin), but it also increases the risk of RMS.
• Costello syndrome is a very rare congenital abnormality. Children with this syndrome have high birth weights but then fail to grow well and are short. They also tend to have a large head. They are prone to develop RMS as well as other tumors.
• Noonan syndrome is a condition in which children are short, have heart defects, and are slower than typical children in developing physical skills and learning things. They are also at higher risk for RMS.

These conditions are rare and account for only a small fraction of RMS cases. But they suggest that the key to understanding RMS will come from studying genes and how they work in very early life to control cell growth and development.