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Erschienen in:
01.06.2013 | Original Article
The History of Lynch Syndrome
Erschienen in: Familial Cancer | Ausgabe 2/2013
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One hundred years ago, Aldred Scott Warthin, MD, PhD, [1] Chairman of the Department of Pathology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, reported the first family with the disease we now call Lynch Syndrome (Fig. 1). In 1895, a woman who worked as his seamstress reported distress over the fact that many family members over several generations had succumbed to cancer, and she feared the same for herself. Indeed, she developed endometrial cancer, and died of that disease as she predicted. Warthin dryly noted that “the statistical study of carcinoma … [has] been carried as far as it can be profitable; and certainly but little that is new has been gained by this method during the last decade”. Throwing a statistical approach to the wind, he undertook a “fairly complete survey” of the family, and created a pedigree, showing which family members had developed cancer, and their relationships (Fig. 2).
Fig. 1
Photos of A. S. Warthin, M.D., Ph.D. a Photo of Warthin as a young man, about 1900. b Formal photo of Warthin, date uncertain. c Informal photo of Warthin, date uncertain [16]. d Warthin at his desk, date uncertain
Fig. 2
a Warthin’s initial pedigree of Cancer Family G, from his seminal article in the Arch Int Med, 1913 [1]. Note the predominance of uterine and gastric cancers in the earlier generations. b Photo of the immigrant founder of Family G. He had 10 children, 6 of whom developed cancer. He died in 1856 at age 60, of cancer. By the third generation, there were 70 descendents, 33 of whom had developed uterine, gastric or colon cancer
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