VIENNA, AUSTRIA — July 3, 2002 —
Women who have survived having leukaemia as children should receive fertility counselling because their reproductive life may be shortened even though they have an apparently normal menstrual cycle after treatment, according to Danish researchers.
Dr Elisabeth Larsen, a research assistant from the Fertility Clinic at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, has studied 26 long-term survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and found that they tended to have smaller ovaries with fewer follicles (the group of cells containing the female egg) available in each menstrual cycle.
However, the good news was that their ovaries appeared to be functioning normally in all other respects, she told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. She said: “Multi-agent chemotherapy has radically increased long-term survival of children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia, but the treatment can induce late effects. It is well known that a proportion of the patients experience ovarian failure and infertility.
The new finding is that female childhood cancer survivors with an apparently normal enstrual cycle might have a shortened reproductive span.”
השאירו תגובה
רוצה להצטרף לדיון?תרגישו חופשי לתרום!