{"entity":{"id":"paul-lichtenstein","kind":"person","name":"Paul Lichtenstein","aka":[],"tldr":"A Karolinska Institutet epidemiologist who led the Nordic twin study, published in 2000, that estimated how much of common cancer is inherited and found it was a minor share for most cancers.","summary":"Paul Lichtenstein was first author of the New England Journal of Medicine paper of 2000 that combined 44,788 twin pairs from the Swedish, Danish and Finnish twin registers, linked to the national cancer registers. It found statistically significant heritability for prostate cancer (42 per cent), colorectal cancer (35 per cent) and breast cancer (27 per cent), and concluded that for most cancers the environment plays the principal role. Lichtenstein's recent indexed papers, from the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet, use the same twin and family registers mainly in psychiatry and behaviour.","asOf":"2026-11-03","links":[{"label":"PubMed author search","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Lichtenstein%20P%5BAuthor%5D%20AND%20Karolinska%5BAffiliation%5D"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["prostate","colorectal"],"sections":["prevention"],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["karolinska"],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":["b-hereditary-risk"],"keyPapers":["paper-lichtenstein-twins-cancer-heritability-nejm-2000"],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"role":"Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet","institutionId":"karolinska","specialisms":["Twin and family register studies","Genetic epidemiology"],"profiles":[{"label":"PubMed author search","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Lichtenstein%20P%5BAuthor%5D%20AND%20Karolinska%5BAffiliation%5D"}],"papers":[{"title":"Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer: analyses of cohorts of twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland","journal":"New England Journal of Medicine","year":2000,"doi":"10.1056/NEJM200007133430201"},{"title":"Recreational screen use and internalizing problems from preadolescence to young adulthood in a longitudinal twin cohort with co-twin comparison","journal":"Nature Human Behaviour","year":2026,"doi":"10.1038/s41562-026-02607-0"}]},"route":"/people/paul-lichtenstein/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"colorectal","kind":"cancer","name":"Colorectal cancer","route":"/cancers/colorectal/"},{"id":"prostate","kind":"cancer","name":"Prostate cancer","route":"/cancers/prostate/"}],"section":[{"id":"prevention","kind":"section","name":"Prevention & Risk","route":"/fronts/prevention/"}],"institution":[{"id":"karolinska","kind":"institution","name":"Karolinska University Hospital","route":"/institutions/karolinska/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-hereditary-risk","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Inherited risk is mostly unidentified","route":"/bottlenecks/b-hereditary-risk/"}],"paper":[{"id":"paper-lichtenstein-twins-cancer-heritability-nejm-2000","kind":"paper","name":"Environmental and heritable factors in the causation of cancer: analyses of cohorts of twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland","route":"/key-papers/paper-lichtenstein-twins-cancer-heritability-nejm-2000/"}]}}