Childhood Cancer Survivors Don’t Pass Higher Risk to Offspring, Study Shows

Most survivors of childhood cancer do not face a higher risk of having children who also develop cancer, according to a study in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. The only exception is when the form of cancer is known to be inherited, researchers said. The findings are important because more children are surviving cancer and living to have children of their own.

To evaluate the risks facing those offspring, a team led by Dr. Risto Sankila of the Finnish Cancer Registry in Helsinki tracked the 5,847 children of people from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Sweden and Norway who had survived childhood cancer in the 1940s and 1950s. The Sankila team found that there was less than one excess case of cancer per 1,000 offspring.

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Compiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II