Hodgkin disease might cause later strokes

DALLAS, Oct 13, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- University of Texas scientists say childhood Hodgkin disease survivors suffer strokes later in life at rates about four times that of other people.

UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers identified the link using patient information from a national database of long-term childhood cancer survivors.

Principal investigator Dr. Daniel Bowers, an assistant professor of pediatrics, said: "We were surprised. We knew there was increased risk of a second cancer -- usually breast cancer -- and increased risk of heart failure, but stroke was unexpected."

Although doctors cure about 70 percent of pediatric cancer outpatients, little research had linked strokes later in life to the disease. Testing that hypothesis on all survivors of childhood cancer was impractical, so the research team narrowed the field to survivors of Hodgkin's disease, a type of lymphoma that's the second-most common form of childhood cancer.

"The goals are changing to more than just curing the child of cancer," Bowers said. "They are to evaluate and reduce the long-term side effects.

The study appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and is available online.

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