Chemotherapy treatment can damage the fertility of women and their children. The treatment can reduce the levels of fertility and chance of having children. Women and men are encouraged to freeze their eggs or sperm before treatment.
But when chemotherapy patients have children naturally, it was usually assumed that their ability to reproduce was unaffected. Children born to women who have had chemotherapy have 72 per cent fewer children of their own than members of the general population.
The effect seems to mainly affect women. Children of men who had chemotherapy treatment may have a similar number of children compared to members of the general population of the same age. Daughters of women who had chemotherapy had 71 per cent fewer children than the general population. Sons of female chemotherapy patients had 87 per cent fewer children.
This may be caused by epigenetics or changes which can be compared to switches that turn on or off certain genes in the DNA passed on to a person’s offspring. Recent studies have found that, smoking causes epigenetic changes in DNA. Chemotherapy given to women may have intergenerational effects on fertility.
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