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Maternal and birth characteristics and childhood rhabdomyosarcoma: a report from the Children’s Oncology Group

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Abstract

Purpose

Previous assessments of childhood rhabdomyosarcoma have indicated maternal and birth characteristics may be associated with tumor development; however, much work remains to identify novel and confirm suspected risk factors. Our objective was to evaluate the associations between maternal and birth characteristics and childhood rhabdomyosarcoma.

Methods

This case–control study included 322 cases and 322 pair-matched controls. Cases were enrolled in a trial run by the Intergroup Rhabdomyosarcoma Study Group. Population-based controls were identified using random digit dialing and were individually matched to cases on race, sex, and age. Families of the case and control subjects participated in a telephone interview, which captured information on maternal characteristics (birth control use, number of prenatal visits, anemia, and abnormal bleeding during pregnancy) and birth characteristics [birth weight, preterm birth, and type of delivery (vaginal vs. cesarean)]. Conditional logistic regression models were used to calculate an odds ratio (OR) and 95 % confidence interval (CI) for each exposure, adjusted for age, race, sex, household income, and parental education. As the two most common histologic types of rhabdomyosarcoma are embryonal (n = 215) and alveolar (n = 66), we evaluated effect heterogeneity of these exposures.

Results

The only characteristic that was associated with childhood rhabdomyosarcoma, and statistically significant, was abnormal vaginal bleeding during pregnancy (OR 1.75, 95 % CI 1.12–2.74). Birth control use (OR 1.45, 95 % CI 0.96–2.18), anemia during pregnancy (OR 1.27, 95 % CI 0.81–1.99), and preterm birth (OR 2.51, 95 % CI 0.74–8.49) were positively associated with childhood rhabdomyosarcoma, but were not statistically significant. Low birth weight [adjusted odds ratios (aOR) 4.46, 95 % CI 1.41–14.1] and high birth weight (aOR 2.41, 95 % CI 1.09–5.35) were strongly associated with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. However, these factors did not display significant effect heterogeneity between histologic types (p > 0.15 for all characteristics).

Conclusions

Overall, we found little evidence that these maternal and birth characteristics are strongly associated with childhood rhabdomyosarcoma.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by US National Cancer Institute grants CA21244, CA24507, CA30318, CA30969, CA29139, and CA13539, and in part by Kurt Groten Family Research Scholars Award (P. Lupo).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, Texas Children’s Cancer Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA

    Philip J. Lupo, Heather E. Danysh, Renke Zhou & M. Fatih Okcu

  2. Children’s Medical Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA

    Stephen X. Skapek

  3. Seattle Children’s Hospital, University of Washington, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, USA

    Douglas S. Hawkins

  4. Division of Pediatric Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Logan G. Spector

  5. Department of Radiation Sciences, Oncology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Karin Papworth

  6. Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Erik B. Erhardt

  7. Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Department of Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Seymour Grufferman

Authors
  1. Philip J. Lupo
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  2. Heather E. Danysh
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  3. Stephen X. Skapek
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  4. Douglas S. Hawkins
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  6. Renke Zhou
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  7. M. Fatih Okcu
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  9. Erik B. Erhardt
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  10. Seymour Grufferman
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Correspondence to Philip J. Lupo.

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Lupo, P.J., Danysh, H.E., Skapek, S.X. et al. Maternal and birth characteristics and childhood rhabdomyosarcoma: a report from the Children’s Oncology Group. Cancer Causes Control 25, 905–913 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-014-0390-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-014-0390-6

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