Now, would-be mothers undergoing chemotherapy can rest easy. A study has confirmed that chemotherapy during pregnancy does not cause developmental problems in children born later. A new research — to be presented at the ongoing 2011 European. Multidisciplinar Cancer Congress — says children born after their mothers were treated with chemotherapy during pregnancy appear to be unaffected by the experience in terms of development of their mental processes and the normal functioning of their hearts. Professor Frederc Amant will tell the Congress, “This is the first time children of 18 months and older have been examined after chemotherapy during pregnancy and the news is reassuring in respect of the effects of chemotherapy on cognitive and cardiac outcomes.” However, he will say that a significant number (47) of the 70 children born from 68 prgnancies were delivered pre-term and the researchers found that prematurity but not chemotherapy affect these children’s cognitive development significantly. The study was funded by the Research Foundation Flanders Project and the Flemih government.

Prof Amant, a gynecological oncologist at the University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium, and colleagues in two other European countries (Netherlands and the Czech Republic) recruited children for the study in 2005. They included children who had been born before that time (between 1991 and 204) and those that were born between 2005 and 2010, rangingm in the age group of 18 months to 18 years.The children were examined at birth and at the following age groups — 18 months, 5-6, 8-9, 11-12, 15-16 and 18 years. The children’s health was monitored for an average of nearly two years, with some of them followed for as long as 18 years. Sixty-eiht would-be mothers were treated with chemotherapy, either on its own r in combination with radiotherapy or surgery or both for a range of various cancers. The most common cancer was breast (35 women), folowed by hematological cancers such as leukaemia and lymphomas (18), ovarian cancer (6) and cervical cancer (4). The researchers looked at the development of the children’s mental processes by evaluating intelligence, verbal and non-verbal memory, attention, working memory and executive functions. Prof Amant found that the incidence and type of congenital malformations were similar to the general population as was growth, general health and development. No heart abnormlities were detected. Cognitive development was in the normal range for the majority of the children, but those that fell below the normalIQ range were mai-nly those that had been born early.

Prof Amant says, “Our results so far suggest that children who were prenatally exposed to chemotherapy seem to do as well as children in
the general population, and, that the treatment does not influence the development of mental processes or the functioning of the heart in the children we have followed for an average of 22 months.

The benefits of chemotherapy to the mothers outweigh any potential longterm harm to the children. “However, it is important to prevent preterm birth if possible and continue pregnancy until at least 37 weeks, as the data suggest the children suffer more from prematurity than from prenatal chemotherapy,” e adds. He concludes, “At this stage we do not know the full, long-term consequences of prenatal chemotherapy, including its effect on the children’s fertility and likelihood of developing cancers when they are older.”

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