Maternal comorbid conditions and the risk of pediatric cancer
Mentor Name: Julia Heck
The proposed project will examine the role of maternal health and comorbid conditions in the risk of childhood cancer. We will use medical records from Denmark's National Patient Register to examine the mother's health conditions before or during pregnancy. Comorbidity indices are used by researchers to predict patient outcomes, such as mortality, but also can be used to predict treatment costs or disease progression. We will apply a comorbidity index developed for pregnancy to examine whether it can be used to predict offspring cancer risk. From this, we will study more rarely examined maternal conditions and will gain insight on important pregnancy conditions, which may be potentially treatable, to reduce cancer incidence in offspring.
