A new research suggests that babies born to childhood cancer survivors do not face an increased risk of birth defects.

Women who survived childhood cancer had a higher risk of having premature or low birth weight babies compared with women who never had cancerous symptoms.

Nevertheless the newborns of these survivors were no more likely to have malformations or die, nor were the mothers at greater risk for pregnancy complications over all.

Another study done on men who survived childhood cancer found that their offsprings were slightly more likely to be of low birth weight though they were not at greater risk for birth defects or premature births than children born to men who never had cancer.

The researchers examined figures from 1973-2000 in four regions provided retrieved from the national cancer registry data, to identify boys and girls who had cancer before the age of 20. They linked the data to birth records to identify the first born child to childhood cancer survivors after their diagnosis.

A comparison was made between the outcomes of babies born to 1,898 female cancer survivors with 14,278 controls. They were also able to compare the outcomes of 470 babies of male survivors with 4,150 controls.

Dr. Eric J. Chow, an author on both papers and a research associate at the cancer center said, "The main take-home message is that most kids born to childhood cancer survivors did very well".

He said that the study was very limited since it was only able to identify birth defects evident upon delivery but most people can feel reassured about the health of their babies.