Women who are exposed to passive smoking during pregnancy ‘increase children’s risk of cancer in later life’
By Daily Mail Reporter
UPDATED:10:45 GMT, 2 July 2010
Pregnant women subjected to passive smoking give birth to babies with an increased, lifelong susceptibility to cancer, research reveals.
Passive smoking causes the same type of genetic damage in unborn infants as that found in adult smokers with cancerous tumours.
Researchers said the abnormalities in newborns were indistinguishable from those found in babies of mothers who were active smokers.
Damaging: Babies born to mothers subjected to passive smoke while pregnant were found to have an increased susceptibility to cancer and other diseases
And they may affect survival, birth weight and lifelong susceptibility to diseases like cancer, according to the study published online in the Open Paediatric Medicine Journal.
Dr Stephen Grant and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh in the U.S. found a smoke-induced mutation in an oncogene, a gene which transforms normal cells into cancerous tumours.
The mutation was the same level and type in newborns of mothers who were active smokers as those in babies born to non-smoking mothers exposed to tobacco smoke.
The mutations were also discernible in newborns of women who had stopped smoking during their pregnancies, but who did not actively avoid second-hand smoke.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1291319/Pregnant-women-exposed-passive-smoking-increase-childs-risk-cancer-later-life.html#ixzz2Dxn3yKG0
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