Chemo a Concern
as Boys Become Men
Infertility can plague those treated while
young
By Janice Billingsley - HealthScout Reporter
Feb. 1 (HealthScout) - A common chemotherapy
treatment for bone and muscle cancers in boys can cause
infertility when they reach adulthood, confirms new
research.
Previously, doctors had surmised that the drugs, which are known
to cause infertility in men, might not affect boys' reproductive
ability since they were pre-pubescent when the doses were given,
says researcher Dr. Lisa Kenney of Boston's Dana Farber Cancer
Institute
But that's false, she says.
"The prior literature made some suggestion that boys would be
protected for gonadial activity [because they had not yet
matured]," Kenney says, "but they all had abnormal sperm
counts."
Dr. Anna Meadows, senior oncologist at the Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia, says the study actually confirms what's been known
for awhile. "About 20 years ago it was thought that boys
weren't as affected by chemotherapy," she says, "but
we've known [that wasn't true] for a long time."
All other aspects of male sexual
development, like the development of physical characteristics and
sexual functioning, however, are not affected by chemotherapy,
both doctors say.
The latest study followed 17 men who had been treated for bone or
muscle cancer at the Farber Institute and Boston Children's
Hospital from 1960 to 1992. At the onset of their disease, 10 of
the participants were pre-pubescent. All the participants had been
given chemotherapy drugs known as alkylating agents, a common
treatment for the disease that works by destroying fast-dividing
cells in the body. Cancer cells fall into this category, as do
hair cells, cells in the digestive tract and cells in the
testicles that produce sperm.
Of the 17 participants followed to adulthood, 10 - or all the men
who had been pre-pubescent when treated -- had no sperm
production, five had reduced sperm production and two had normal
sperm counts, Kenney says. The two with normal counts had received
the least amount of chemotherapy, she says. Details appear in the
February issue of the journal Cancer.
But such sober results need not be wholly discouraging, she says.
"The bad news is these men are at high risk for infertility,
but the good news is that they can still father children with
assistance," Kenney says. Today, she says, people can bank
sperm before treatment if they're old enough, and they can take
advantage of new technologies in reproductive techniques, like in
vitro fertilization, and sperm injections.
Meadows points out that newer drugs now are being used to treat
these kinds of cancer, and those drugs may turn out to be
effective in reducing the problem of infertility as a side effect
of treating cancer.
"There are other drugs that are not as harmful," she
says. "What we haven't done is to follow patients with the
new drugs to see what their fertility is like."
What To Do
To find out more about the effects of cancer chemotherapy, go to
Oncology
Education Series Web Site
To learn more about testing for male infertility, download this
PDF information from the American
Society for Reproductive Medicine.
01-FEB-2003 -
Copyright © 2003 Rx Remedy, Inc. |
