Drug used during pregnancy may increase cancer risk in mother’s adult children
Exposure in the womb to a drug used to prevent miscarriage appears to raise the offspring’s cancer risk decades later, especially for colorectal and prostate cancers, researchers have found. They will present the results of their new study Tuesday at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting.
Featured Science from ENDO 2021
Drug used during pregnancy may increase cancer risk in mother’s adult children
Press Release
Meetings & Events
Drug used during pregnancy may increase cancer risk in mother’s adult children
Washington, DC
March 22, 2021
Hydroxyprogesterone caproate may contribute to increasing rates of early-onset cancer, researchers say
Exposure in the womb to a drug used to prevent miscarriage appears to raise the offspring’s cancer risk decades later, especially for colorectal and prostate cancers, researchers have found. They will present the results of their new study Tuesday at ENDO 2021, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting.
Some adult children of women who received the drug, hydroxyprogesterone caproate (OHPC or 17-OHPC), during pregnancy in the 1950s and 1960s are now experiencing more than twice the odds of cancer, said the study’s lead researcher, Caitlin Murphy, Ph.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.
OHPC is a synthetic progestogen hormone that was first marketed in the mid-1950s (as Delalutin in the United States) to treat pregnant women with recurrent or threatened miscarriage. It is still available in the United States for pregnant women (under the trade name Makena) to prevent preterm birth.
“There is compelling evidence that some synthetic hormones cause endocrine disruption during early fetal development that may lead to cancer later in life for the offspring,” Murphy said.
As an example, she cited the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) that some pregnant women took in the 1970s and that years later was found to increase the risk of certain cancers in adult daughters of those women.
“The rates of some cancers, such as colorectal cancer, are increasing in adults younger than 50, and we wondered if endocrine disruption in utero—in the womb—may partly contribute to this increase,” she said.
Murphy and her colleagues examined the effect of OHPC exposure on the cancer risk among adult offspring of mothers who used OHPC during the pregnancy with them versus offspring whose mothers did not. All mothers were participants in the Child Health and Development Studies, a group who received prenatal care between June 1959 and June 1967 in the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in Oakland, Calif. The researchers used the California Cancer Registry to identify cancers diagnosed in the adult children through 2018.
Among more than 18,751 live births, 954 cancer diagnoses were made in offspring ages 18 to 58 years, the researchers found. A total of 181 women received OHPC during pregnancy. The children they gave birth to had cancer detected in adulthood more than twice as often as nonexposed offspring. Most of these cancers—65 percent—occurred in people younger than age 50, Murphy noted.
Furthermore, OHPC-exposed offspring had a nearly five times higher rate of colon and rectal cancers and almost four times the rate of prostate cancer compared with nonexposed offspring, according to Murphy, who said the strength of this association surprised them. Rates of breast cancer and cervical cancer also were elevated in exposed offspring but not as dramatically, she said.
“Our findings suggest multiple organ systems are susceptible to endocrine disruption during early development, which may increase risk of cancer decades later,” Murphy said. “Caution using OHPC and other endocrine-active pharmaceuticals in early pregnancy is warranted.”
The
U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed
in October 2020 that OHPC be withdrawn from the market because postmarket studies failed to verify clinical benefits.
About Endocrine Society
Endocrinologists are at the core of solving the most pressing health problems of our time, from diabetes and obesity to infertility, bone health, and hormone-related cancers. The Endocrine Society is the world’s oldest and largest organization of scientists devoted to hormone research and physicians who care for people with hormone-related conditions.
The Society has more than 18,000 members, including scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in 122 countries. To learn more about the Society and the field of endocrinology, visit our site at
www.endocrine.org
. Follow us on Twitter at
@TheEndoSociety
and
@EndoMedia
.
Source URL: Read More
The public content above was dynamically discovered – by graded relevancy to this site’s keyword domain name. Such discovery was by systematic attempts to filter for “Creative Commons“ re-use licensing and/or by Press Release distributions. “Source URL” states the content’s owner and/or publisher. When possible, this site references the content above to generate its value-add, the dynamic sentimental analysis below, which allows us to research global sentiments across a multitude of topics related to this site’s specific keyword domain name. Additionally, when possible, this site references the content above to provide on-demand (multilingual) translations and/or to power its “Read Article to Me” feature, which reads the content aloud to visitors. Where applicable, this site also auto-generates a “References” section, which appends the content above by listing all mentioned links. Views expressed in the content above are solely those of the author(s). We do not endorse, offer to sell, promote, recommend, or, otherwise, make any statement about the content above. We reference the content above for your “reading” entertainment purposes only. Review “DMCA & Terms”, at the bottom of this site, for terms of your access and use as well as for applicable DMCA take-down request.
Acquire this Domain
You can acquire this site’s domain name! We have nurtured its online marketing value by systematically curating this site by the domain’s relevant keywords. Explore our content network – you can advertise on each or rent vs. buy the domain. Buy@TLDtraders.com | Skype: TLDtraders | +1 (475) BUY-NAME (289 – 6263). Thousands search by this site’s exact keyword domain name! Most are sent here because search engines often love the keyword. This domain can be your 24/7 lead generator! If you own it, you could capture a large amount of online traffic for your niche. Stop wasting money on ads. Instead, buy this domain to gain a long-term marketing asset. If you can’t afford to buy then you can rent the domain.
About Us
We are Internet Investors, Developers, and Incubators- operating a content network of several thousand sites while federating 20+ eCommerce and SaaS startups. With our proprietary “inverted incubation” model, we leverage a portfolio of $15M+ in valued domains to impact online trends, traffic, and transactions. We use robotic process automation, machine learning, and other proprietary approaches to power our content network. Discover our work!