Risk and prognosis of cancer in middle-aged women who have experienced the death of a child.

First, we studied the relative risk of cancer among women born between 1935 and 1954 who had experienced a child's death, compared with women without this experience. Second, we examined whether survival was any different between cancer patients in the 2 groups. The study was a population-based nested case-control study that included 14,669 cancer cases and 29,750 age-matched controls. The women who were included as incident cases were further analyzed using Cox regression in a study of total survival. The overall relative risk of cancer among women who had lost a child was nearly identical to that of women who had not lost a child (OR = 0.96, 95% confidence interval 0.87-1.07), after adjustment for age and parity. In the analysis of specific cancer sites, there was no difference in relative risk between the 2 groups. In relation to cancer survival, we found that patients who had lost a child had an overall risk of dying that was nearly identical to patients who had not had this experience (HR = 1.08, 95% confidence interval 0.92-1.26), after adjustment for age and stage at diagnosis. For specific sites of cancer, the results also showed no difference in survival between the 2 groups. In conclusion, risk and survival of cancer were not different among women who had experienced the death of a child from the risk and survival among women without this experience.