Two cancers in childhood linked with educational deficits

British researchers, wanting to know if any specific childhood cancers were associated with an educational deficit in adulthood, went looking. They found two.

In this enormous study (Lancashire ER. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2010; doi:10.1093/jnci/djp49), researchers had at their disposal a very rare population-based cohort of over 10,000 cancer survivors, thanks to the British Childhood Cancer Survivor Study.

For a control arm, they used the General Household Survey of Great Britain.

The findings indicate that childhood survivors of Leukemia and Central Nervous System (CNS) tumors reached lower-than-expected educational levels compared with the general population. This was especially true if treatment included head irradiation.

Principal researcher
E.R. Lancashire
The Centre for Childhood Cancer Survivor Studies
School of Health and Population Sciences
The University of Birmingham

Sources: HemOncToday and ScienceDaily.