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Objective To report the prevalence and comparison of cancer-linked health behaviors and identify risk factors associated with unhealthy behavior among adolescent siblings and cancer survivors. Methods The Child Health and Illness Profile—Adolescent Edition (CHIP—AE) was completed by 307 survivors and 97 sibling controls 14–20 years of age. Results Risky behavior ranged from 0.7% to 35.8% for survivors and 1.0% to 41.2% for siblings. Comparisons of sexual behavior, tobacco, alcohol, or illicit drug use utilizing continuous data revealed no differences between groups. Categorically, survivors were less likely to report past smokeless tobacco use or current use of beer/wine or binge drinking (p-values range from .01 to .04). Survivors with better mental health were at lower risk for poor behavioral outcomes. Conclusions Adolescent survivors engage in risky health behaviors at rates generally equivalent to their siblings. Aggressive health education efforts should be directed toward this high-risk population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss an article by J. L. Klosky and colleagues on the risk-taking behaviors among adolescent survivors of childhood cancer and their siblings. They comment on the study findings reported in Klosky and colleagues' article that showed that health behaviors among patients with cancer and cancer survivors may influence risk-taking behaviors such as tobacco and drug use. They also note that the study suggests similarity on risk behaviors among adolescents and those of their siblings.