What are the risk factors for Hodgkin disease?
A risk factor is anything that affects your chance of getting a disease such as cancer. Different cancers have different risk factors. For example, exposing skin to strong sunlight is a risk factor for skin cancer. Smoking is a risk factor for cancers of the lung, mouth, larynx (voice box), bladder, kidney, pancreas, and several other organs. But risk factors don’t tell us everything. Having a risk factor, or even several, does not mean that you will get the disease. And many people who get the disease may not have had any known risk factors. Even if a person with Hodgkin disease has a risk factor, it is often very hard to know how much that risk factor may have contributed to the lymphoma. Scientists have found a few risk factors that may make a person more likely to develop Hodgkin disease, although it’s not always clear why these factors increase risk.
