What causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma?

What causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma?

A lot of different cancers, specifically lymphomas, have particular genetic abnormalities associated with their tumours. There's a particular type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma called mantle cell lymphoma, which has a specific genetic abnormality. There are specific types of leukaemias that have a specific genetic abnormality. It's theorised that that particular genetic defect leads to the production of the cancer. However, some people also believe that genetic mutation just happens to be a way to mark or to identify this particular cancer, and we're not a hundred percent sure how these mutations develop to begin with. We do know that the environment plays a large role. There are a large number of Russian patients who now live in the United States that lived in and around the Chernobyl area and the Kiev area, where they were exposed to significant fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Those patients have had a higher degree of prevalence and incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas as a result of certain exposures and radiation exposure. So, in the end what causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is possibly a genetic predisposition due to particular genetic abnormalities, as well as a strong environmental component.