Developments in Brief : Cancer Risk for ‘DES Daughters’ Found Not to Worsen With Aging

The risk for a rare form of cancer among women whose mothers took the drug DES during pregnancy has remained constant even as these women age, researchers say.

“That’s important and good news,” said Dr. Philip Cole, co-author of the latest article on so-called DES daughters, published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The risk of developing clear-cell adenocarcinoma of the vagina and cervix has remained at about 1 in 1,000, the researchers said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, thousands of pregnant women were prescribed the hormone diethylstilbestrol, or DES, in hopes of preventing miscarriages. But DES was banned in 1972 after it was discovered that many daughters of these women later developed cancers of the reproductive system.

Since then, Cole and researchers at the University of Chicago School of Medicine have been tracking the risk for these women and the incidence of the disease.

They found that the cancer incidence peaked at about 31 cases each year in 1975 and has continued to decrease since then. The latest report found seven cases in 1984.