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Scientists are starting to uncover how neighborhood can affect the biology of cancer
Where you live has a relationship to your odds of getting cancer and surviving cancer. Epidemiologists studying this link they see in the data have focused on so-called social determinants of health — poor access to transportation, for example, could make it harder for residents to see a doctor. Places lacking grocery stores with fresh food could mean worse nutrition for locals.
The worse outcomes for people from poorer, more stress-filled neighborhoods suggest that our physical and social spaces are somehow influencing our biology, said Brittany Jenkins-Lord, a molecular biologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine. “Historically, this has been done in epidemiological ways, looking at risk factors and relating those to mortality or different kinds of outcomes,” she said. But exactly how something like a neighborhood might be influencing cancer biology is part of a growing field of study for scientists like her, Jenkins-Lord said. By examining things like tumor genetics, epigenetics, modifiers of gene expression, and other biological markers, they are starting to turn up intriguing results.
