Life Events and the Occurrence of Cancer in Children

Jacobs, Theodore J.; Charles, E

doi:10.1097/00006842-198001000-00002

Cited by 92 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…death of a spouse. Small case-control studies of male lung cancer patients (Home, 1979), families of children with cancer (Jacobs and Charles, 1980) and gastric cancer patients (Lehrer, 1980) and five moderate to large case-control studies of breast cancer patients (Bremond et al, 1986;Scherg and Blomke, 1988;Forsen, 1991;Chen et al, 1995) reported such associations. Other types of stressful life events, e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Psychological stress, cancer incidence and mortality from non-malignant diseases

Johansen

Olsen²

1997

Br J Cancer

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Summary Psychological stress has been claimed to contribute to the onset of cancer and to increase mortality from a number of nonmalignant diseases. We investigated the effect of a genuine psychological stressor, i.e. cancer in a child, on the incidence of cancer and mortality from non-malignant diseases of 11 231 parents in a Danish nationwide population-based study. The children were identified from records in the Danish Cancer Registry for the period 1943-85; their parents were identified from population registers. Overall, 1665 parental malignancies were diagnosed from the date the cancer of the child was reported until 1992, compared with 1702 expected from national incidence rates, yielding standardized incidence ratios of 1.0 (95% confidence interval, 0.9-1.0) for all parents, 1.0 for mothers and 1.0 for fathers. No statistically significant deviation of the relative risk from unity was seen for any period of follow-up after the stressful event, and no excess risk was seen for any particular type of cancer. Moreover, a total of 2137 parental deaths were observed over the period 1974-92, compared with 2333 expected from national mortality rates, giving an overall standardized mortality ratio of 0.9 (range 0.9-1.0). No excess mortality was seen from causes associated with allergic illness, autoimmune conditions, chronic illness or changes in behaviour. Our data provide no support for the hypothesis of an association between psychological stress and the incidence of cancer or mortality from nonmalignant diseases. We conclude that the human organism is highly adaptable, even to extreme psychological stress.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Psychological stress, cancer incidence and mortality from non-malignant diseases

Johansen

Olsen²

1997

Br J Cancer

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“…One study of children with cancer (mostly leukemia) and controls (81) revealed that 32% of mothers of cases, compared to 90% of mothers of controls, described the original pregnan cy as "planned. " One may well wonder if this represents a pathetic and desperate effort on the part of the mother to "reinterpret" the fact and the meaning of a dreaded disease in a small child.…”

Section: Cancermentioning

confidence: 99%

Stress and Health

Kasl¹

1984

Annu. Rev. Public Health

112

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“…It has been collected a lot of similar data, however mechanisms of interrelations ''mind-cancer" remain unclear. Greene and Miller informed about possible links of psychoemotional stress with development of cancer in children 50 years ago in their work (Greene & Miller, 1958), later researchers also paid attention to these links (Jacobs & Charles, 1980). Extremely negative influence of prenatal psychological stress and depression on mother-child symbiosis has been established up to an arrest of development of fetus and poor birth outcomes (Newport et al, 2002;Coussons-Read et al, 2006).…”

Section: Population Datamentioning

confidence: 99%