(news-medical.net) – Both female and male chemotherapy-treated survivors of childhood cancer have an increased risk of impaired fertility, but results suggest that the risk in women is limited to those given specific chemotherapy drugs.
“[O]ur findings should provide reassurance to most female survivors treated with chemotherapy without radiotherapy to the pelvis or brain, given that chemotherapy-specific effects on pregnancy were generally few”, say Eric Chow (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington, USA) and co-researchers.
They report on the reproductive outcomes of 10,938 participants of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study who had survived for at least 5 years following a diagnosis of cancer prior to the age of 21 years, compared with 3949 siblings. All cancer survivors had received chemotherapy, but not direct or scatter radiation to the brain or pelvis.
During a median follow-up of 8 years for survivors and 10 years for siblings, 38% of survivors reported having or siring a pregnancy, compared with 62% of siblings.
And multivariable analysis, adjusting for self-reported ethnicity and year of birth, showed that the probability of having or siring a pregnancy was significantly reduced for survivors versus siblings, with hazard ratios of 0.87 and 0.63 for female and male survivors, respectively.
This was also the case for having a livebirth – female survivors were 0.82 times less likely to have at least one livebirth compared with siblings, while male survivors had a 0.63 times reduced likelihood of their partner having a livebirth.