Background:In recent years the possibility of an increased risk for cancer among childrenborn following assisted reproductive technology (ART) has been suggested.
Aims:To evaluate the risk of pediatric cancer among ART children compared to spontaneously conceived children (SC).
Methods:The historical cohort was comprised of all infants born in 8 IVF units during the period 1997-2004. The reference group included all infants born following SC pregnancies during 2000-2004 from Clalit Health Services.
The cohort database was linked with the National Cancer Registry by using the infants' personal identification number. Multivariate Poisson model was computed to assess the adjusted risk for pediatric cancer in ART children as compare to SC children.
Results:The cohort included 9,042 children born following ART treatments and 211,763 SC children. The mean duration follow-up was 10.3±2.2 years in the ART group and 9.3±1.5 years in the SC group. Overall 21 cancer cases were identified in the ART group (0.22 rate per 1000 person year) as compared to 361 cancer cases in the SC group (0.18 rate per 1000 person year). The mean age of diagnosis was 4.9±4.8 and 4.6±3.3 years for ART and SC respectively. The adjusted relative risk for cancer development in the ART as compared to SC children was 1.42(95%CI 0.94-2.17).
Conclusion: Children born following ART were not at significantly higher risk for pediatric cancer as compared to SC children. Further studies are warranted with larger sample size and longer follow up, in order to confirm these findings.
