EARTH.COM - Medium-sized dog breeds are more prone to cancer than both the smallest and the largest breeds, according to a recent study led by the University of California, Riverside.
These findings challenge the multistage model of cancer, which associates increased size within a single species to a heightened risk of cancer due to more frequent cellular mutations as cells divide and replicate.
“The question that arises is why, then, don’t we get more cancer than a mouse? We don’t. There is no increase in cancer risk as animals increase in size from species to species,” explained Leonard Nunney, a UC Riverside evolutionary biologist and the study’s author.