Science / Medicine : Childhood Cancer Survivors

People who survived childhood cancer because of treatment with anti-cancer drugs do not face a greater risk of having children with birth defects, physicians reported last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Oncologist Daniel M. Green and his colleagues at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., studied the risk because one ironic side effect of some anti-cancer drugs is that they can, by themselves, spark the development of tumors by altering genetic material in the body’s cells. In a study of the children of 100 people who had been treated with chemotherapy during childhood or adolescence, Green’s team found only one anti-cancer drug, dactinomycin, that seemed to be associated with a problem.

Two women who had received the drug gave birth to children with heart defects, but several previous studies have found no link between the drug and heart problems. The researchers said a larger examination of dactinomycin might be warranted to see if the drug actually increases the risk of congenital defects.