Incidence of cancer in children born after in-vitro fertilization

Abstract

Evaluation of the long-term health of children born using in-vitro fertilization (IVF) provides important information to clinicians and consumers. Until very recently, there have been no published data on the incidence of cancer in children conceived as a result of IVF, despite a number of case reports of neuroblastoma in children conceived using fertility drugs. This study used a record-linkage cohort design to investigate the incidence of cancer in children born after IVF. The study included all conceptions using assisted reproductive technologies between 1979 and 1995 at two clinics in Victoria, Australia that resulted in a live birth. Data on births were linked with a population-based cancer registry to determine the number of cases of cancer that occurred. The standardized incidence ratio (SIR) was calculated by comparing the observed number of cases to the expected number of cases. The final cohort included 5249 births. The median length of follow-up was 3 years, 9 months (range 0-15 years). In all, 4.33 cases of cancer were expected and six were observed, giving a SIR of 1.39 (95% CI 0.62-3.09). This study found that children conceived using IVF and related procedures did not have a significantly increased incidence of cancer in comparison to the general population.

Maternal use of fertility drugs and risk of cancer in children—A nationwide population‐based cohort study in Denmark

“…While some studies showed increased risks for all cancers 14 and for specific types of cancer, such as retinoblastoma, 15 neuroblastoma, 6 leukemia, [16][17][18] and hepatoblastoma, 19,20 others found no association. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] However, the main part of these studies are characterized by small sample sizes, short follow-up periods and lack of information on the use of fertility drugs. 33 Additionally, a major problem in this field of research is disentangling the effects of fertility treatment from the potential effects of the underlying infertility.…”

Neonatal outcome after IVF

“…В обобщенном голландском исследовании [35], где были включены и дети, ро-дившиеся в период 2002-2007 гг., был отмечен не-значительный повышенный риск ретинобластомы. В исследовании авторов из Австралии [8] и система-тическом обзоре из Нидерландов [40] было доложе-но об отсутствии возрастания случаев возникнове-ния рака у детей, зачатых методом ЭКО, по сравне-нию с детьми из общей популяции. В крупном швед-ском исследовании, включающем 16 280 детей, зача-тых с использованием методов ЭКО, родившихся в период 1982-2001 гг., был обнаружен такой же риск развития рака, как и в основной популяции, но нео-жиданно были выявлены более высокие риски раз-вития гистиоцитоза (стандартизованное отношение инцидентностей SIR 5,6 CI 95% 1,8-13) [28].…”

Les enfants de l’ICSI sous la loupe

“…Cinq nouveaux cas ont été diagnostiqués entre novembre 2000 et février 2002, ce qui représente une augmentation du risque de 7,2%, ou 4,9%, selon que l'on considère que 1,0%, ou 1,5%, des enfants sont conçus par FIV aux Pays-Bas. Cependant, deux autres études ne font état que d'une légère [8] [9]. Plusieurs articles rapportent quant à eux une augmentation du nombre de syndromes liés à un défaut d'EG.…”