Gagliardi A, Dugue, PA, et al. - This study was undertaken to investigate whether and how stochastic epigenetic mutations are associated with the risk of breast cancer, lung cancer, and mature B-cell neoplasms. Researchers examined the correlation of the total number of stochastic epigenetic mutations (SEMs) with the risk of eight cancers in 4,497 case-control pairs nested in three prospective cohorts. They further examined if SEMs were randomly distributed across the genome or enriched in functional genomic regions. An association was found between the number of SEMs and a higher risk of different cancers in prediagnostic blood samples.