Assisted Reproductive Technology Linked to Cancer Risk

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been a boon to couples with an infertility problem by allowing the woman to achieve a pregnancy. As with any medical procedure, there are both benefits and risks. A new study has found that children conceived by ART have an increased risk of developing a cancer. The findings were published online on February 4 in the journal Pediatrics by an international team of researchers.

Children Born after Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) do not Appear to be at Greater Risk

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The study authors note that an increasing number of children are born after ART, and monitoring their long-term health is of interest to ART researchers. To add to long-term health data, they conducted a study to compare cancer risk in children conceived by ART to that in children conceived without the technology.

For the study, the researchers accessed data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. The registry contains individual information on all children born in Norway (including information of ART conceptions). The study group comprised all children born from 1984 through 2011; cancer data were obtained from the Cancer Registry of Norway. Follow-up began at date of birth and ended on the date of the first cancer diagnosis, death, emigration, or December 31, 2011. The data was subjected to statistical analysis to calculate the overall cancer risk between children conceived by ART and those not. Cancer risk was also evaluated separately for all childhood cancer types.

The study group comprised 1,628,658 children; 25,782 were conceived by ART. Of the total 4,554 cancers, 51 occurred in ART-conceived children. Risk of overall cancer was not significantly elevated; however, an increased risk of leukemia was found for children conceived by ART compared to those who were not. In addition, an elevated risk of Hodgkin's lymphoma was found for ART-conceived children; however, this was based on small numbers.

The authors concluded that their study found elevated risks of leukemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma in children conceived by ART.

Assisted Reproductive Technology Does Not Increase Cancer-Risk in Children

The authors are affiliated with: Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Women’s Health and Section for Reproductive Medicine, Department of Gynecology, Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet, Oslo, Norway; Cancer Registry of Norway, Institute of Population-Based Cancer Research, Oslo, Norway; and Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics, Hormonal and Reproductive Epidemiology Branch, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland.

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