Lynch Syndrome Related Endometrial Cancer: Aspects and Concerns

Copyright: © 2013 Wang Y, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Lynch Syndrome (LS), or Hereditary Non-Polyposis Colon Cancer (HNPCC), is caused by a germline mutation in one of several DNA Mismatch Repair (MMR) genes. Recently, researchers pay closer attention to LS-related Endometrial Cancer (EC), which typically presents as a sentinel cancer up to 40-60% of the cases [1]. Such unique clinical manifestation of LS-related EC will certainly have the potential to influence early detection, screening, and prevention of LS-related non-endometrial cancers, which classically have more aggressive biological behavior and subsequently worse prognosis compared to that of LS-EC. Therefore, many countries, including United States, have started screening patients with EC to identify those with LS, thereby leading to earlier screening for Colorectal Cancers (CRC). Earlier screening would aim to either prevent CRC or detect it in earlier stages [2]. It may be a cost-effective approach since the mortality of CRC is higher than that of EC [2]. Although such understanding has been nationally recognized these years in the literature in the field of gynecology and pathology, many physicians, mainly gynecologists and pathologists, and health care providers are not aware of the clinicopathologic features of LS-related EC. They do not know when a LS-related EC should be considered and how to screen such patients for a possible LS. In this editorial commentary, we provide some guidelines to identify patients with LS from those EC presenters from both clinical and pathologic perspectives and propose an effective screening method for LS in individuals with endometrial cancer.