Female cancer survivors have pregnancy problems later--study

CNN quoted lead author and scientific director, International Epidemiology Institute, John Boice as saying, “Radiation impairs growth of the uterus.”

“The risk for stillbirth and neonatal death was related almost entirely to the young girls who were treated before puberty,” added Boice as regards findings of the current study.

Research details
Under the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS), researchers regularly evaluated 2,805 childhood cancer survivors who were diagnosed with the disease between 1970 and 1986.

The study included 1,148 male and 1,657 female survivors, aged less than 21.

Fifty seven percent of these were known to have had lymphoma. It was also known that out of this sample, majority of people (61 percent of women and 62 percent of men) had received radiotherapy, either alone or together with chemotherapy.

The study was conducted in 25 US oncology centres and one Canadian centre and participants chosen were survivors for at least five years post diagnosis.

Researchers handed out questionnaires that evaluated pregnancy reports and their outcomes.

These reports were then used to determine if cancer treatments during childhood had after-effects on reproductive outcomes in both male and female survivors.

Research outcomes
Analysis revealed that there were 4,946 pregnancies in survivors over the time, with 93 of these resulting in stillbirth or neonatal death (1.9 percent of the pregnancies).

Also, a total of 1,774 survivors had received radiotherapy as cancer treatment. This group had 3,077 live births and 60 stillbirths or newborn deaths (1.9 percent of pregnancies to those given radiotherapy).

Researchers also found that high radiation exposure to uterus or ovaries considerably increased a female’s odds of having a still baby or newborn death (five stillbirths or early deaths among 28 females receiving radiation).

Furthermore, girls who were exposed to radiotherapy before the start of periods had even higher risk of stillbirths or neonatal death (three occurrences among 69 women receiving radiotherapy).

However, in men radiotherapy for testicular cancer had no such effect and their chances of effectively having children later in life remained unaltered, showed the research.

The study appears in the journal ‘The Lancet’.