Pregnant women and their doctors can be reassured that chemotherapy does not appear to have long term effects on children prenatally exposed to the treatment, experts say in response to new data published in the Lancet Oncology this week.
The Dutch and Belgian researchers looked at 68 pregnancies subjected to over 230 cycles of chemotherapy, assessing the children at birth and at regular intervals up to the age of 18 with testing of neurological, cognitive, auditory and cardiac functioning as well as school performance, sporting activities and general health.
The investigators found the children were neurologically in the normal range, although cognitive development scores were lower for those born preterm. IQ scores went up by an average of 11.6 points for...
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