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Pregnancy Hope for Women After Cancer Treatment

Posted on: Friday, 1 July 2005, 15:00 CDT

PATIENTS who have had damaging cancer treatment may still be able to have children thanks to groundbreaking research carried out by medics in the Capital.

Doctors today revealed that their work may help women who have been treated for cancer to conceive, even if they have had ovary- damaging treatment.

Many women who have been treated with radiation therapy face great uncertainty over whether or not they will be able to become mothers. The treatment can cause the onset of early menopause by destroying eggs in the ovaries.

But scientists at Edinburgh University believe they can give women new hope after identifying a "window of opportunity" which predicts when female patients will become sterile.

Edinburgh's Dr Hamish Wallace worked with Dr Tom Kelsey, of St Andrews, and radiation oncologist Dr Frank Saran on the project. They have developed a formula which identifies the optimum age for women to conceive.

Dr Wallace, a senior lecturer and a children's cancer specialist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, said: "Our research has made it possible to predict when a young woman who has been successfully treated for cancer will develop ovarian failure.

"This will allow doctors to treat them with hormone replacement therapy and prevent osteoporosis and other disabling symptoms of the menopause. This knowledge will also guide patients and doctors to their future window of opportunity to have a baby.

"For young women are at risk of a very early menopause, it is now possible to counsel them of the options available to preserve fertility before treatment starts."

Dr Kelsey added: "Our results are exciting and useful, although further data is needed to improve the accuracy of our methods."

Dr Saran, of London's Royal Marsden Hospital said: "We hope this will enable doctors to counsel women on their reproductive potential following successful treatment of their cancer."

The findings were published today in the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's Red Journal.

The researchers have developed a formula that takes into account the number of immature eggs and the dose of radiation therapy received, to work out when a woman could expect to conceive.

Dr Kelsey believes his team's findings could be used by cancer specialists. He said that it is possible that their work is taken into account when radiation therapy is delivered.

"Our evaluation of the effective sterilising dose gives radiotherapists an amount of radiation that will sterilise nearly all patients of a known age," he added.

"This information can be used either to vary the treatment so that less radiation is received by the ovary or possibly commence freezing of ovarian tissue."

* YOUNG children are not getting enough sunlight because of fears about skin cancer, a doctor said today.

Professor Brian Diffey said children's bone health was suffering because of a deficiency in Vitamin D caused by a lack of sunlight.

He said children only needed to be exposed to a small amount of sunlight, enough to slightly redden the skin on the face, hands and arms, to more than adequately satisfy the body's requirement for vitamin D throughout the year.

However, Prof Diffey, who works at Newcastle General Hospital, said there was no need to abandon skin cancer awareness campaigns. Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said: "Such evidence that many adolescents are not sufficiently exposed to the sun is not enough to justify abandoning current awareness campaigns about skin cancer, which are aimed primarily at avoiding excessive exposure.

Prof Diffey stressed that British children and adolescents need not deliberately spend extended periods in strong sun, but should take regular walks in the sunshine.

Source: Evening News; Edinburgh (UK)

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