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UK Wedding News

15/08/2014

Fertility Hopes For Female Child Cancer Sufferers

New research has suggested that young girls with cancer, who are most likely to become infertile following treatment for the disease, can be identified using guidance that was development almost two decades ago.

The findings have been published in the journal Lancet Oncology, claims that the criteria will help to choose which girls should be offered the opportunity to freeze some tissue from their ovaries, which they can then use in the future. It is hoped this frozen tissue could, one day, help young cancer survivors to have a family. Some cancer treatments can affect female fertility by triggering early menopause, so freezing samples of ovary tissue before patients start treatment is the only option to try to preserve their fertility.

There have been previous instances where frozen tissue has been taken from adult women and they have had a baby, but the procedure has not been proven in girls or young women. The technique itself, to extract the sample, is also relatively experimental, it has been said. As a result, it adds that it is important that doctors can accurately predict which patients are the most likely to benefit from the procedure.

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Almost 20 years ago, guidelines were developed to select which girls should be offered the procedure; this was based on factors such as their age, the type of cancer treatment they received, as well as their chances of being cured of the disease. The girls are now older, and this has allowed doctors to verify their predictions.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh were able to validate the criteria by looking at more than 400 girls, who were under the age of 18 when they had been diagnosed with cancer. In all but one case, they were able to accurately predict the patients that entered the early menopause.

Commenting on the report, Professor Hamish Wallace, Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, said: "Advances in lifesaving treatments mean that more and more young people with cancer are surviving the disease. Here we have an opportunity to help young women to have families of their own when they grow up, if they so choose."

Currently, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, supported by the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Edinburgh, is the only centre in the UK to offer selected young cancer patients the opportunity to freeze their ovarian tissue before they start their cancer treatment.

(JP/MH)

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"New research has suggested that young girls with cancer, who are most likely to become infertile following treatment for the disease, can be identified using guidance that was development almost two