A study looking at chronic stress and fertility in women who had treatment for a childhood cancer (CSRF)

Cancer type:

All cancer types

Children's cancers

Status:

Results

Phase:

Other

This study was for women who had treatment for a childhood cancer at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Edinburgh.

It was open for people to join between 2015 and 2017. The team analysed the results in 2018.

More about this trial

Women who have treatment for cancer as a child can sometimes find it difficult to have children when they are older. This could be because of a change in the levels of some of the hormones that affect reproduction. Researchers wanted to find out more about this.

In this study, they wanted to find out what impact long term (chronic) stress has on fertility. Chronic stress can be caused by several things, including having treatment for cancer as a child. This is not the same as short term stress that many people experience at some stage.

The main aims of this study were to find out more about chronic stress and how this affects fertility.

Summary of results

This study was for women between 16 and 25 who had treatment for cancer as a child.

The research team wanted to find out more about the effect of this on fertility. To do this, they:

asked women to complete questionnaires about their long term (chronic) stress levels
measured the level of cortisol, a hormone we release when we are stressed
measured the levels of various reproductive hormones

Results
A total of 24 women joined this study. They all had treatment for cancer when they were younger than 18 years old. The cancers they had included sarcoma, lymphoma and brain tumour.

The results showed that there may be a link between:

a raised level of long term (chronic) stress for women who had cancer treatment as a child, and
a fall in ovarian function

The research team suggest that more work is done to find out why this happens.

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the references below.

Please note, these articles are not in plain English. They have been written for health care professionals and researchers.

Chronic Stress and Reproductive Function in Female Childhood Cancer Survivors
TM Hardie
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) dissertation, Marquette University, 2018.

Chronic Stress and Ovarian Function in Female Childhood Cancer Survivors
TM Hardie
Oncology Nursing Forum, 2019. Volume 46, Issue 3.

Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on the information in the articles above. Some of the information has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) and published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves.