IVF babies at greater risk of leukaemia, study finds - but experts claim older, 'less fit' parents...

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French scientists discovered children conceived using frozen embryos had a 61 per cent greater chance of developing the blood cancer later in life.

Experts said the risk was still very low and urged parents not to be alarmed. READ MORE:Babies born through IVF may be at higher risk of childhood leukaemia, research suggests.

Currently, the fertility treatment has a success rate of up to 40 per cent. Around a third of IVF cycles among under-35s resulted in a live birth in 2019 in the UK. Yet this dropped to just 4 per cent in over-44s 'Findings from this one study must be treated with caution particularly as this was conducted in a different healthcare system from our own, and where the number of children with blood cancer is very small,' he said.

He added: 'Risk factors are not the same as causes and there are various risk factors for blood cancer that all interlink, with things like your age, sex and ethnicity playing an important role too.'For those going through, or who have a young child from assisted conception these findings shouldn't be something to worry about but if you do have any concerns you should reach out to your healthcare team.

However, the team made up of health bodies across France, led by the French National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety, acknowledged the 'risk assessment of childhood cancers is challenging given their rarity'.Dr Channa Jayasena, an expert in reproductive endocrinology at Imperial College London, who wasn't involved in the research, said the study had a notable omission.

'Shifts in society mean that more women need to secure employment stability before having kids,' he said.'Instead, we should focus on reducing modifiable risk factors for childhood leukaemia, such as smoking.' 'This study is reassuring as the results show that the risk of leukaemia for children born after assisted reproduction did not differ significantly from that of children conceived naturally, ' she said.The fertility treatment is often the go-to-method for couples struggling to conceive, despite costing up to £5,000 for one cycle privately.

Under current official guidelines, women under the age of 40 struggling to have a child naturally should get three cycles of the fertility treatment on the NHS.

 

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IVF babies at greater risk of leukaemia, study finds - but experts claim older, 'less fit' parents...French scientists discovered children conceived using frozen embryos had a 61 per cent greater chance of developing the blood cancer later in life.
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