Women who survive cancer less likely to fall pregnant, reveals study

JANE KIRBY

The research was presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) conference in Geneva.

Experts examined data for all types of cancer and found a detrimental effect on fertility across the board, but particularly in cervical, breast and leukaemia patients.

Cancer and its treatment is known to affect fertility in several ways, including chemotherapy and radiotherapy damaging the ovaries.

Radiotherapy may also affect parts of the brain which control reproduction.

Professor Richard Anderson, from Queen’s Medical Research Institute at Edinburgh University, who led the study, said: “This analysis provides the first robust, population-based evidence of the effect of cancer and its treatment on subsequent pregnancy across the full reproductive age range.

“The major impact on pregnancy after some common cancers highlights the need for enhanced strategies to preserve fertility in girls and young women.”

The study looked at data for 23,201 female cancer survivors, who had 6,627 pregnancies.

Experts said almost 11,000 would have been expected in a comparable matched control group from the general population.

For women who had not been pregnant before their cancer diagnosis, 21 per cent achieved a pregnancy after their diagnosis compared with 39 per cent in a control group. This means those women with cancer were about half as likely to fall pregnant for the first time as other women.

Mr Anderson said: “Some women may have chosen not to have a pregnancy.

“Thus, while these results do show an expected reduction in the chance of pregnancy after chemotherapy and radiotherapy, having a pregnancy after cancer does involve a range of complex issues that we cannot address in this study.”