These blog posts have concentrated on lead-related issues so the title of this post may be confusing. But it is absolutely about lead.

There are about 50,000 Australians with defective BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. A defective BRCA1/2 gene results in a diminished ability to repair DNA damage in your body. That greatly increases the risk of a variety of cancers, but the risk of breast and ovarian cancers in women, and breast and prostate cancers in men with these genes may be increased dramatically.

In females, this leads to a roughly 70% whole of life risk of breast cancer and up to a 50% risk of ovarian cancer. As a result, women with the defective genes are having prophylactic mastectomies, oophorectomies (removal of ovaries) and hysterectomies.

Males with the defective BRCA1/2 genes have about a 10-fold increase in breast cancer (1-2% compared to 0.1%). The stated lifetime incidence of prostate cancer with an impaired BRCA1 gene is up to 26%, BRCA2 is up to 61%, as opposed to about 10% for the general male population.

Brian Arndt, who I’ve mentioned in previous posts, had the BRCA1 gene and had to have a mastectomy because of breast cancer, so while men are less affected than women, it’s still a problem.

I’m going to rehash some other stuff already posted.

Analysis of cadaver tissue lead content in the mid 1970s indicated that lead was present in the bones (95%), and that lead levels were raised in atheromas (atherosclerotic plaques), the aorta, the prostate and the ovaries.

One of the many deleterious effects of lead is the production of free radicals that can result in cellular and DNA damage. A defective DNA repair mechanism can potentially turn a somewhat higher incidence of cancers seen in lead-poisoned individuals into a disaster.

I came across a paper published in 2024, of a prospective study of almost 1000 women in Poland with the defective BRCA1 gene, that compared cancer incidence with blood lead levels. See: “Blood Lead Level as Marker of Increased Risk of Ovarian Cancer in BRCA1 Carriers”, Adam Kiljanczyk et al, Nutrients 2024, 16, 1370.

The results were quite startling as the incidence of ovarian cancer was found to increase 3-fold (300%) as blood lead levels increased. That was at quite low blood lead levels.

This has a lot of ramifications because BRCA1 ovarian cancer rates haven’t been linked to other causative factors. In fact, if you compare the risk rates of ovarian cancer to the increase in the presence of lead, the possibility exists that the increase in ovarian cancer rates could be due entirely to the presence of lead.

It also suggests that if this is the case, removing the lead might reduce the risk, eventually leading to the preservation of reproductive organs in women and greatly reducing the side effects from prophylactic surgery.

It wouldn’t be all that far-fetched to speculate that a similar increase in lead levels could be responsible for the increased incidence of prostate cancer in men.

There is some additional evidence as well, such as the detection of calcification in the prostate which is postulated to be responsible for prostate hyperplasia. Calcification is the body’s way of reacting to inflammatory agents. Then there is also a study that correlated urinary lead content with PSA. Urinary lead correlates well with plasma lead and bone lead, increasing PSA is often indicative of cancerous changes in the prostate.

If lead is found to increase the incidence of prostate cancers as it does the incidence of ovarian cancers, then removing the lead with chelation might very well decrease the risk of prostate and ovarian cancer in individuals with the BRCA1/2 genes and other impaired DNA-repair related genes.