ABSTRACT

Numerous animal studies indicate that preconception maternal and paternal exposures to mutagenic drugs used in human anticancer therapy can result in adverse reproductive outcomes and the transmission of genetic damage5-9. In man, although there is as yet no documented transmission to the offspring of heritable changes induced by anticancer drugs, as mentioned above there are limitations to the types of epidemiological studies that have been done to date. Certainly, there is evidence in humans from the observations of treatment-related second tumors in cancer survivors that mutations in somatic cells are involved in the induction of cancer 11,41 That anticancer regimens induce mutations in somatic cells suggests that mutations can also be induced in human germ

cells. However, there are no reliable methods to relate somatic and germ cell mutations in a given individual. At least one study has suggested that anticancer therapy-induced cytogenetic damage in somatic cells may not correlate with cytogenetic damage in male germ cells42. Thus, there remain concerns that anticancer drugs induce heritable mutations in the germ cells of treated individuals (Table 2).