Women who face Infertility problems due to cancer treatments in childhood can be treated and cured completely to conceive successfully, researchers say.
For the study, Dr Sara Barton of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, USA and colleagues looked at 3531 women who were diagnosed with cancer before turning 21 and 1366 sisters of these women. All the cancer survivors were part of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) and belonged to 26 Canadian and US institutions.
Previous studies have shown that the therapies women undergo during their cancer treatments in childhood put them at higher risks of experiencing infertility problems like early menopause and ovarian failure. Supporting previous studies, researchers found that cancer survivors in the current study were at a 50 percent higher risk of experiencing a clinical infertility than their siblings.
"These data confirm a high risk for infertility and childlessness for female cancer survivors that have received high doses of alkylating agent chemotherapy or pelvic radiation," Dr Barton, said in a news release.
Fertility problems were more common among young survivors, below age 24 than women who were in their late thirties, when compared to their siblings. Researchers found that young cancer survivors were three times less likely to conceive, than their siblings. However, this study couldn't find such a huge difference between women above 30 and their siblings.
The fact that fertility problems affect most of the women after 30 may play an important role in the occurrence, researchers said.
However, at the end of the study, researchers found that majority of the cancer survivors, say two-thirds (64 percent) of the 455 women with clinical infertility were able to conceive successfully.
Commenting on the findings, Professor Richard Anderson, of the University of Edinburgh, wrote: "'Barton and colleagues' data highlight the risk of infertility in childhood cancer survivors beyond the risk of ovarian failure. There is a need for this risk to be addressed by oncologists at the time of diagnosis and during follow-up as a key part of long-term care. Fertility preservation is now part of mainstream fertility treatment, but requires seamless links between oncologists and reproductive medicine."
The study has been published in The Lancet Oncology.
