Offspring sex ratio and gonadal irradiation in the British Childhood Cancer Survivor Study.

ABSTRACT

We investigated offspring sex ratio among 6232 offspring born to 3218 survivors of childhood cancer in relation to therapeutic irradiation, and pooled our data with those from two other large-scale studies giving a total of 9685 offspring. Exposure to high-dose gonadal irradiation was not associated with a significant alteration in offspring sex ratio compared to low doses (men P=0.58, women P=0.66). There was also no evidence that the ratio varied with time since cancer diagnosis when comparing survivors treated with radiotherapy vs those without (men P=0.51; women P=0.46). This, the largest study to date, finds no evidence that exposure to radiation affects the offspring sex ratio among survivors of childhood cancer.