Children with Cancer: Could Parents Also be at Risk?

If a child is diagnosed with cancer, a new study shows that parents should also consider themselves at risk as well.

According to researchers from the Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah, they examined the family medical history of 4,482 children who had been diagnosed with cancer over a 43-year period to determine the cancer risk in their relatives.

Researchers found that children who were typically diagnosed with any type of cancer at an age younger than 18 had a doubled risk that their parents, siblings or children would become ill with cancer or another illness.

"No one had previously studied the question, so we simply told parents there was no evidence of increased risk to the other children," said Joshua Schiffman, M.D., medical director of HCI's High Risk Pediatric Cancer Clinic and a pediatric hematologist/oncologist in in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah, via a press release.  "Now we can give an evidence-based answer-the risk depends on your family history of cancer."

Researchers note that this is one of the first studies to broadly examine the risk of cancer in all relatives of a family that involves a cancer patient.

"Because our data came from the UPDB, the assessment of family history in our study does not rely on self- or family-reported medical history," said lead author Karen Curtin, Ph.D., a genetic epidemiologist and UPDB assistant director, via the release. "Self-reporting of family medical history depends on an individual's memory, while our data comes from the statewide Utah Cancer Registry that records nearly all cancer cases, which reduces possible errors in reporting family cancers."

Though study authors write that childhood cancer is rare, findings show through a collection of three generations of family medical history for all newly diagnosed pediatric cancer patients that there is an increased risk for family members, especially among other children in the family.

More information regarding the study can be found in the International Journal of Cancer.