Glossary:
Overall survival: the time that a patient lives after treatment, regardless of disease status.
Progression-free survival: the time that a patient lives after treatment without their disease spreading or worsening.
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Pregnancy After Glioma Diagnosis Associated With Worse Progression Time
February 28, 2025
Alex Biese
Alex Biese
A nationally-published, award-winning journalist, Alex Biese joined the CURE team as an assistant managing editor in April 2023. Prior to that, Alex's work was published in outlets including the Chicago Sun-Times, MTV.com, USA TODAY and the Press of Atlantic City. Alex is a member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, and also performs at the Jersey Shore with the acoustic jam band Somewhat Relative.
For female patients with glioma, pregnancy after receiving a diagnosis of glioma is associated with worse progression-free survival times.
Among female patients with glioma, pregnancy after receiving a diagnosis of glioma has been found by researchers to be associated with worse progression-free survival times.
But researchers, publishing their findings in the European Journal of Cancer, further noted that, “none of the patients with pregnancy after glioma diagnosis experienced deterioration or progression during pregnancy.”
Researchers included female patients who were 18 years old or older but younger than 46 years old with diagnoses of glioma between Jan. 1, 2000 and Jan. 12, 2019 from two academic centers in Austria, and divided the patients into three groups: nulliparae (having never had children), primi-/multiparae (having given birth at least once) before receiving a glioma diagnosis and primi-/multiparae after receiving a glioma diagnosis.
Drawing on data from 159 patients who met inclusion criteria — 47 (29.6%) nulliparae, 88 (55.3%) primi-/multiparae before their glioma diagnosis and 24 (15.1%) primi-/multiparae after their glioma diagnosis — at a median follow-up of 127.4 months, median overall and progression-free survival were 247.6 months and 67.9 months, respectively.
Among the 24 patients who had children after diagnosis, 15 (62.5%) were pregnant once, six (25%) were pregnant twice, one (4.2%) was pregnant three times and two (8.3%) were pregnant four times. Two patients reported an abortion or miscarriage, two each reported two or three abortions or miscarriages, and all four women with unintended abortions became pregnant again, researchers noted. Seventeen (70.8%) had one successful delivery and seven (29.2%) delivered two children after receiving a glioma diagnosis.
In the group of patients who had children after their glioma diagnosis, the median time between diagnosis and first pregnancy was 53.6 months, and researchers stated that none of the patients experienced clinical deterioration during pregnancy and no pregnancy had to be terminated prematurely due to glioma complications.
Among the 159 patients, 113 (71.1%) experienced tumor progression and 53 (33.3%) died in the follow-up period, researchers reported. The median time to progression from the beginning of pregnancy was 53.6 months.
Looking at the findings by patient subgroups, 57.4% of the nulliparae patients, 76.1% of the patients in the primi-/multiparae before receiving a glioma diagnosis arm and 79.1% of the patients in the primi-/multiparae after receiving a glioma diagnosis arm experienced tumor progression.
Researchers further found that patients in the primi-/multiparae after glioma diagnosis arm had a 2.45 times higher risk of their disease progressing compared to the other groups. However, this disparity was not present regarding overall survival when compared to the other two groups of patients, with researchers noting that overall survival data should be interpreted as immature and that longer follow-up study would be needed in order to investigate the potential impact on overall survival.
Glioma, according to the National Cancer Institute, refers to a group of tumors that form in the glial cells of a patient’s brain and spinal cord. Glial cells, the National Cancer Institute explained, support and protect nerve cells in the central nervous system.
Approximately three out of every 10 brain tumors are gliomas, and most fast-growing brain tumors are gliomas, according to the American Cancer Society.
Reference:
“Association of pregnancy with tumour progression in patients with glioma” by Dr. Annette Leibetseder et al., European Journal of Cancer.
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