Researchers at UTHealth Houston have discovered that prenatal exposure to an anti-nausea medication that was widely used in the 1960s and 1970s raises the risk of colorectal cancer in adult offspring.
The study was published in JNCI Cancer Spectrum today and was directed by Caitlin Murphy, PhD, MPH, associate professor at UTHealth Houston School of Public Health.
According to Murphy, the rise in colorectal cancer incidence rates among adults born in and after the 1960s points to the risk factors introduced at that time, including pregnancy-related exposures. The 1960s pregnancy medicine Bendectin originally contained dicyclomine, which is now used to treat irritable bowel syndrome-related spasms. Bendectin was administered to women to avoid nausea and vomiting.
Data from the Child Health and Development Study, a multigenerational cohort that included over 14,500 pregnant women in Oakland, California between 1959 and 1967 and produced 18,751 kids, were analyzed by the researchers. They discovered from medical records that 1,014 children, or nearly 5% of the population, had been exposed to bendectin while still in the womb.
Incidence rates of colorectal cancer per 10,000 offspring were three times higher in those exposed to bendectin than in unexposed children.Dicyclomine, which was a component of the three-part Bendectin formulation used in the 1960s, may be to blame for the increased risk of colorectal cancer among kids exposed to the medication, according to Murphy. She added that some research suggest that babies born to mothers who got Bendectin during pregnancy are more likely to suffer gastrointestinal birth abnormalities. It is thought that dicyclomine may directly target the developing gastrointestinal tract of the child.
