And while over-zealous activist groups continue to scare parents about the hypothetical risks that certain chemicals (often found in parts per billion) represent, a new German study finds that even newborns exposed to chemotherapy in utero manage to come out pretty well despite exposure to such well-known toxic agents.
Published in The Lancet Oncology, the latest research finds that neonates of breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy while pregnant are not at high risk of complications, compared to babies of pregnant women who did not receive the treatment.
Led by the German Breast Group, the study examined more than 400 European women with a median age of 33 who were diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer while pregnant. From this cohort, nearly half underwent chemotherapy during pregnancy. Although those mothers undergoing chemotherapy gave birth to infants with a lower weight, there were few other noticeable differences between the two groups.
The findings also showed that, though 50 percent of women with breast cancer delivered preterm, (which resulted in certain problems for the infants), these adverse effects occurred regardless of whether mothers had undergone chemotherapy. This then suggests that chemotherapy did not appear to be an independent risk factor for adverse outcomes. Rather, prematurity itself is the risk one that may well be due to breast cancer itself rather than the drugs administered in its treatment.
Hopeful about these, ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross notes that, with the rise in maternal age at the time of first pregnancy, we are also seeing an increase in breast cancer during pregnancy. Consequently, he says, studies such as this one are imperative. It s a relief to hear that chemotherapy during pregnancy is not necessarily fraught with severe complications.
In fact, a previous small study in The Lancet Oncology published in February also found that children exposed to an average of three or four cycles of chemotherapy while en utero did not present any significant differences in neurocognitive outcomes, compared to children who were not exposed to the treatment.
But Dr. Bloom was astounded by these results. The idea that a wide variety of drugs all of which are toxic could safely be used in pregnant women runs counter to many years of conventional wisdom, he says. There are other implications from this study. Perhaps now pregnant women and their doctors will be more comfortable with the idea of using other drugs as well, such as antidepressants and anti-nausea medications when they are needed.