PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 21 -- Epidemiologists have associated vitamins taken by women around the time of conception and in early pregnancy and the risk of brain cancer for their children.
Mothers of children with medulloblastomas or primitive neuroectodermal tumors of the brain were less likely than mothers of unaffected children to have taken prenatal multivitamins, found Greta R. Bunin, Ph.D., of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.
The mothers of children with brain tumors also tended to have diets lower in folate and iron, they noted in the September issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention.
But the mothers' consumption of cured meats did not appear to influence risk for brain tumors in children, the authors added. The meats have been implicated as a possible cause of brain tumors because they contain nitrates and nitrosamines that can induce nervous system tumors in animals.
