Child cancer linked to mothers’ birth fluids

Doctors in Japan have discovered that mothers can pass cancer to their babies during labour, through fluid inhaled as they give their first cries.

Doctors in Japan have discovered that mothers can pass cancer to their babies during labour, through fluid inhaled as they give their first cries.

A team led by doctors at the National Cancer Centre in Tokyo found two cases in which cervical cancer in a mother had caused lung cancer in babies who had swallowed cells in amniotic fluid as they were being born.

The doctors say that such cases, although rare, reinforce the importance of vaccination against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer.

It was known that cancer cells can be transmitted through the placenta, although this is unusual. One in a thousand women who gives birth has cancer, but transmission from mother to child occurs in only one case in 500,000.

In the first case documented by the Japanese doctors in The New England Journal of Medicine, a woman discovered that she had cervical cancer three months after giving birth to an apparently healthy boy. Shortly before his second birthday he developed a persistent cough and cancer was found in both lungs.

In the second case, a six-year-old boy was found to have a 6cm tumour in his left lung.

Doctors at first assumed that the occurrence of the disease in mother and son was coincidental, but DNA analysis of the tumours revealed that they had the same genetic mutations. The tumours in the boys lacked the Y-chromosome, which is found in males.

Both boys had chemotherapy, and the second had his left lung removed. Both recovered, although their mothers died.

The doctors say the problem could have been avoided if the babies were delivered by caesarean section, but that the best response is vaccination against HPV. In western nations rates of HPV vaccination are above 70 per cent, but in Japan unease about the vaccine has reduced the rate to as low as 1 per cent.

“In order to prevent any such cases, the best measure is not to get cervical cancer,” said Chitose Ogawa, one of the authors of the study.

“That means have the vaccine and regular checks for cervical cancer for the purpose of early detection.”

HPV infection is common and is passed on by skin-to-skin contact, often during sex. Most of the time the virus is killed by the body’s immune system and only a few variants cause cancer.

Studies show that protection is highest when the inoculation is given before the recipient becomes sexually active and is exposed to the virus.

The Times