Julia E Heck, Pei-Chen Lee, Chia-Kai Wu, Chung-Yi Li, Di He, Noah Federman, Fei Yu, Jorn Olsen, Beate Ritz, Onyebuchi A Arah, Johnni Hansen
Author Information
Julia E Heck: Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA.
Pei-Chen Lee: Department of Health Care Management, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan.
Chia-Kai Wu: Department of Health Care Management, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei, Taiwan.
Chung-Yi Li: Department of Public Health, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
Di He: Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA.
Noah Federman: Department of Pediatrics, Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Fei Yu: Department of Biostatistics, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Jorn Olsen: Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA.
Beate Ritz: Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA.
Onyebuchi A Arah: Department of Epidemiology, Fielding School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California, USA.
Johnni Hansen: Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Spina bifida has been reported to co-occur with pediatric cancer, but comprehensive evaluations remained elusive. We investigated this co-occurrence in two large, population-based studies in Taiwan (N = 1900 cancer cases, 2,077,137 controls) and Denmark (N = 5508 cases, 137,700 controls). Analyses in Denmark were restricted to the period before prenatal diagnostics became available (2004) and pregnancy terminations of fetuses with birth defects became more common. Using national patient and cancer registries, we linked Spina bifida and cancer diagnoses among cases and non-cases. The risk of Spina bifida among all cancer cases was increased and similar in Denmark [odds ratio (OR)=8.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) 5.1-13.8] and Taiwan (OR = 8.5, 95% CI 4.0-17.8), particularly for central nervous system (CNS) tumors (Denmark: OR = 16.3, 95% CI 8.1-33.0; Taiwan: OR = 26.6, 95% CI 8.5, 83.1), including benign CNS tumors (Denmark: OR = 41.5, 95% CI 21.2, 81.4). These findings suggest the need for comprehensive investigation of shared risk factors in the link between Spina bifida and pediatric cancer.
