Women who take a daily multivitamin before and during pregnancy sharply reduce the likelihood that their children will develop leukemia, brain tumors and other forms of childhood cancer, according to new Canadian research. Taking multivitamins and folic acid during your pregnancy can greatly lower the risk of the mother’s baby developing cancer by almost 50 percent. This new study was done from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children.

The research should encourage mothers greatly to take multivitamins and folic acid during pregnancy as it is a simple solution which can reap huge rewards.

The study found that a regime of multivitamins and folic acid helped lower the chance of a baby developing a brain tumor by 27 percent, leukemia by 39 percent and neroblastoma by 49 percent. These are some huge numbers for just taking a simple vitamin every say.

Doctors in the study stated that only 40 percent of Canadian mothers took multivitamins which are highly accessible and cheap.

Women whose mothers took a common pregnancy drug are at risk of early menopause, research shows. A study of thousands of women revealed that those who were exposed to the ‘wonder drug’ DES in the womb were 50 per cent more likely to start the menopause early.

The discovery adds to the horrific legacy of the anti-miscarriage drug, which has already been linked to a string of health problems.

The mothers-to-be who took it are at increased risk of breast cancer, and research published last week revealed the deadly legacy has been passed onto the daughters, who have double the risk of the disease.

Routinely prescribed to pregnant women from the 1940s to 1970s, the side-effects of DES or diethylstil-boestrol turned out to so devastating it was dubbed the ’silent Thalidomide’ (after the morning sickness drug which left thousands of babies handicapped).

An estimated 200,000 women in the UK took DES, a synthetic form of the female sex hormone oestrogen. It was withdrawn in the Seventies after studies showed it had lasting effects on the children.

As the DES daughters grew up, many developed cancers of the vagina and other disorders of the reproductive system which made them infertile. The sons had low sperm counts and undescended testicles, and it is thought they might be at increased risk of testicular cancer.

Studies have shown that mothers and daughters both have an increased risk of breast cancer, with the risk increasing with age.

For instance, DES daughters over 40 have almost twice the usual risk of developing the disease. The latest study is the first to look at whether exposure to DES, which was also known as Stilbeostrol, affected a woman’s reproductive life.

The Boston University researchers compared the age of menopause of 4,800 ‘DES daughters’ with that of more 2,100 women whose mothers had not taken the drug. The DES daughters were 50 per cent more likely to have reached menopause early. And

the more DES their mothers had taken, the greater the risk. Worst affected were those whose mothers had taken part in a DES trial in the Fifties — these women were twice as likely to have reached menopause as others their age.

THE increased risk, the American Journal of Epidemiology reports, is thought to be because DES reduces the number of immature eggs produced as the unborn baby develops in the womb.

Baby girls are usually born with up to two million eggs but by the time they reach menopause all but 1,000 or so have withered away. If DES daughters have fewer eggs to begin with, they might reach menopause earlier.

Lead researcher Professor Julie Palmer, who has studied the effects of DES for 14 years, said: ‘Every woman who knows she is DES exposed should be having careful screening for vaginal cancer.

‘Women should also approach their GPs about extra screening for breast cancer.’

The Department of Health advises anyone with a family history of DES to ask their doctor for more frequent cancer screening.

Source: Daily Mail