Study Suggests Higher Cancer Rate Among IVF Babies

Reader Comments
Back to article

My twins were IVF children. I carried them until 38 weeks, they had a high apgar score and were a healthy birth weight. Our son was diagnosed with ALL (leukemia) at the age of 15 years and we lost him 15 months later. During his illness I followed many other children who were fighting the same battle online on caringbridge sites. Many were twins. I assumed most of those twins were in vitro. I kept asking the doctors and anyone who would listen if they thought it was odd the number of twins where one of them had leukemia or another form of cancer. I do believe there is something to this correlation and I know my "study" wasn't official but it sure seemed fishy to me.

Tamar of MS 10:29PM July 21, 2010

its possible the correlation is due to factors among the difficult to conceive population. Its possible that individuals that require IVF inorder to conceive have genetic, sperm and/or egg problems that also increase cancer risk. unfortunately it would be very difficult to determine because its hard to find a similar population that were able to conceive w/o IVF due to other medical intervention or huge efforts.
A theory as to why it might be IVF has been that the increased risk of cancers are the result of sperm characteristics that would normally be screened against in the vaginal travel to the egg and competition between normal sperm.
Also i believe the higher rates of cancer in the affluent is the result of late life cancers due to the ability to live longer that affluence brings, but i am not 100% on this. I do not believe this study looked at late life cancers as IVF has not been around that long.

justin of OH 7:27PM July 19, 2010

health care in sweden is free. so unless you think all of sweden is affluent...of course we do know they are all swedish...which means they are all blonde and tall. in the USA they WOULD all be affluent. but i am pretty sure in sweden even the factory workers are blonde and tall. the bus drivers are blonde and tall. actually their population is fairly homogenized. you probably would have a lot of bias with a study like this in the USA. but much less in sweden.

bill of CA 5:23PM July 19, 2010

Higher rate of IVF in affluent.

K W of VA 4:44PM July 19, 2010

i only know 2 IVF children and one of them just got over chemo and surgery for an osteosarcoma. "Finish your research before you publish this rubbish." LOL. if everyone had waited to stop smoking tobacco until the research was finished millions would have died!
Uhhh...did millions die from tobacco? or was that second hand smoke. hey - have they finished that research yet?
now how about brain tumors from cell phones?
are we going to wait on that one also. NOT ME DUDE. it is much too easy to just use a headset.

bill of CO 4:16PM July 19, 2010