Children born with congenital heart defects face a significantly increased risk of developing childhood cancer, according to a major new study.
Leukaemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma were the most common kinds of cancer found among these children.
The findings come from an analysis of 3.5 million births in a South Korean health database, collected from 2005 to 2019.
Overall, the risk of cancer was increased by 66% but researchers found it more than doubled in children with defects that involved blood vessels or heart valves. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, along with ovarian and liver cancer, were all significantly linked to heart defects.
The researchers say there also seems to be a link to cancer risk in the mothers. Mothers of babies with congenital heart defects faced a 17% increased risk of having a cancer diagnosis themselves in the ten years after the birth.
The researchers found 72,205 cases of new-born babies with congenital heart defects for the research, published in the journal Circulation.
Researcher Professor June Huh, professor of paediatric cardiology at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, said: “Our research highlights the importance of maternal factors and genetic traits and understanding how they may be connected.
“The genetic variants inherited from the mother may provide the necessary environment for cancer to develop in congenital heart defect patients, highlighting a possible shared genetic pathway underlying both conditions.”
Dr Keila Lopez, an expert from the American Heart Association, said stress is also a possible link. They said: “This finding needs to be further explored to understand if there are environmental factors affecting genes (epigenetics) or stress-related changes linking congenital heart defects with maternal cancer risk.”
Source:
Kang D, Choi GJ, Heo J, Park SW, Sung J, Kim I, Park T, Cho J, Huh J. (2025) “Risk of Cancer in Newborns With Congenital Heart Disease and Their Mothers: A Nationwide Cohort Study.” Circulation, 12 March 2025, doi: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.124.071811.
Link: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.124.071811
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