Factors related to pregnancy and birth and the risk of childhood brain tumours: The ESTELLE and ESCALE studies (SFCE, France)

Abstract

Little is known of the causes of childhood brain tumors (CBT). The aims of this study were to investigate whether extremes of birth weight were associated with increased risk of CBT and whether maternal preconceptional folic acid supplementation or breastfeeding reduced the risk. In addition, other maternal characteristics and birth related factors were also investigated. We pooled data from two French national population-based case-control studies with similar designs conducted in 2003-2004 and 2010-2011. The mothers of 510 CBT cases (directly recruited from the national childhood cancer register) and 3,102 controls aged under 15 years, frequency matched by age and gender did a telephone interview, which focussed on demographic and perinatal characteristics, and maternal life style habits and reproductive history. Odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using unconditional logistic regression, adjusted for age, sex, study of origin and relevant confounders. No association was found between CBT and birth weight or fetal growth. The use of preconceptional folic acid supplementation was rare (5.3% in cases and 7.8% in controls) and the OR was 0.8 (95% CI 0.5, 1.4). There was no association with breastfeeding, even prolonged (six months or more; OR 1.0, 95% CI 0.8, 1.4). Neither was there any association between CBT and other investigated factors (maternal body mass index, gestational weight gain, congenital abnormality, maternal reproductive history or use of fertility treatments. Although large, this study was underpowered for subtype analyses. Pooling data with other population-based studies may provide further insight into findings by CBT subtypes.

Maternal Folate Intake and Risk of Childhood Brain and Spinal Cord Tumors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

“…The outcome of interest in our analysis was childhood brain tumors, classified according to the ICCC-3 [3]. From the enrolled studies [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38], we derived the risk estimate of the highest relative to the lowest folate intake for the analysis.…”

“…In our selection, 9 studies reported OR [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]38] and one study reported the hazard ratio [37]. For the overall estimation, the hazard ratio was taken as an approximation to the OR, and the meta-analysis was performed as if all types of ratio were ORs.…”

“…Among the studies, one considered folate supplements only [31] and 2 considered dietary folate intake only [29,30], while the other 7 studies considered both folate supplements and dietary folate intake [32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Five studies reported maternal folate intake during pregnancy only [29-31, 34, 37], whereas the other 5 studies presented findings for maternal folate intake before and during pregnancy separately [32,33,35,36,38].…”

“…Several studies have previously reported an inverse association between maternal folic acid supplementation in the periconceptional period and risk of CB-SCT [29][30][31][32], whereas others have reported largely null findings [33][34][35][36][37][38]. Therefore, the aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis on maternal folate intake before and during pregnancy and the risk of CBSCT.…”

Brain Tumor Detection from Medical Images: A Survey

“…Some studies have showed that the number of people suffering and dying from brain tumor has increased to 300 per year during the last few decades [34]. Brain tumor is statically the second leading cause of child death [3]. Brain tumor is formed due to the abnormal cell growth in brain tissues.…”