eMedicineLive

Almost 2,500 to 5,000 pregnant women are diagnosed with cancer every year in Europe. However, most of these women either abort their pregnancies or defer their treatment till after childbirth in order to save their children from the ill effects of chemotherapy. The women who decide against abortion are advised by their gynecologists to deliver the baby as soon as it becomes viable. However, according to a new research presented today at the European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress (EMCC) in Stockholm, prenatal chemotherapy has not been found to affect the baby’s mental or cardiac activity in any manner.

 

Professor Frederic Amant, a gynecological oncologist at the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, who led the research along with his colleagues, analyzed 70 children born of 68 pregnancies between the years 1994 and 2010. The mothers of the children suffered from various types of malignancies and had received chemotherapy, either alone or along with surgery or radiotherapy, or both, during their pregnancy. The children were in the age group of 18 months to 18 years and were followed up for an average of nearly 22 months. Out of the 70 children included in the study, 47 were delivered preterm. The researchers collected data on the mothers’ treatment and medical history. They then assessed the children’s mental processes by evaluating intelligence, verbal and non-verbal memory, attention, working memory and executive functions. The cardiac activity of the children was assessed with the help of electrocardiography and echocardiography. 

 

It was found that the intelligence, cognitive development, general health and cardiac activity of these children were at par with the general population. There was no evidence of any cardiac abnormality. The rate and type of malformations, if any, were also similar to other children. An important finding of the study was that majority of children in the study who had a low cognitive development were born preterm. This goes on to show that it is inducing a preterm delivery, rather than prenatal chemotherapy, which adversely affects the child’s development. The researchers have however said that more studies are required to know the effect of prenatal chemotherapy on the fertility of the child and on the likelihood of his developing cancers when he is older.

 

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