A study conducted on 200,000 people discovered that if one of the twin siblings get cancer, the other has a significantly higher chance of getting cancer too. Identical twins share exactly identical genetic code and traits as they are developed from the same egg inside their mother’s womb. The risk is also higher for fraternal twins, twins who are developed in different eggs inside the womb.
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concluded that the increased risk was only 14% for identical and 5% for fraternal twins. The study, however, that was conducted on twins from Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, considered medical data from 1943 to 2010. The study revealed that 32% or almost one third of the whole group got cancer and identical twins had a 46% chance of getting cancer. Fraternal twins were at 38% risk.
Not only that, 38% identical twins actually suffered from the exact same cancer. This was 26% in case of fraternal twins. The study revealed that skin melanoma, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer and uterian cancer were the most common variants of cancer shared by the twins.