Increased risk for hematologic malignancies seen in children of patients with SLE

Although rare, children born to mothers with systemic lupus erythematosus may have an increased risk for developing hematologic malignancies, according to researchers from the McGill University Health centers in Montreal, Quebec, and Calgary, Alberta.

A cohort of 509 women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) were selected from the Offspring of SLE mothers Registry (OSLER), with 719 children were born to mothers in the group. The cohort was compared with 5,824 matched control individuals who had 8,493 children. Mean maternal age was 30.3, and mean follow-up time was 9.1 years.

Evelyne Vinet

Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to adjust for maternal demographics, comorbidities, sex of children and gestational diabetes.

Nine of 719 (1.25%) children born to women with SLE developed a hematologic malignancy compared with 38 of the 8,498 (0.45%) in the control population. The most frequent malignancy seen in both the study and control groups was acute lymphoblastic leukemia. However, primary non-Hodgkin lymphoma of the bone was seen in two of the nine children of mothers with SLE compared with six children in the control cohort.

For a subsample of 1,925 children in the study whose mothers’ data on maternal drug coverage were available, in utero medication exposures were rare in the cancer patients and none were exposed to antimalarial, corticosteroid or immunosuppressant drugs, according to the researchers. – by Shirley Pulawski

Reference:

Vinet E, et al. Paper #2664. Presented at: American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting. Nov. 14-19, 2014; Boston.

Disclosure: The authors have no relevant financial disclosures.