Can the time of year you were born affect your chances of developing brain cancer?Possibly, report Duke University researchers, who studied four different groups of medical records from various regions of the country and found that children born in late summer and fall were more likely to develop an aggressively malignant brain tumor called medulloblastoma."Medulloblastoma is more common in kids with autumn birthdates, even after correcting for the higher frequency of fall birthdays,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Edward C. Halperin, vice dean of the school of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C. Halperin and his colleagues suspect that something these children were exposed to in the womb during a period of crucial brain development may have contributed to their cancer. Pesticides are a prime suspect, he said, since they are commonly sprayed during the springtime. Not everyone agrees, however. Dr. Mark Souweidane, vice chairman and director for pediatric neurological surgery at Weill Cornell Medical Center/New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, said that while there “seems to be a marginally higher rate of children born with medulloblastoma in the fall, there’s no good basis for saying that it’s from pesticide exposure.” According to Halperin, other studies done in Norway and Japan have found an association between fall births and medulloblastoma. And, he added, other research has also shown a link between pesticide exposure and childhood brain cancers.
