Congenital Malformations and Perinatal Deaths Among the Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors: A Reappraisal

Yamada, Michiko; Furukawa, Kyoji; Tatsukawa, Yoshimi; Marumo, Keiko; Funamoto, Sachiyo; Sakata, Ritsu; Ozasa, Kotaro; Cullings, Harry M.; Preston, Dale L.; Kurttio, Paivi

doi:10.1093/aje/kwab099

Title: Congenital Malformations and Perinatal Deaths Among the Children of Atomic Bomb Survivors: A Reappraisal

Journal Article · Tue Apr 13 00:00:00 EDT 2021 · American Journal of Epidemiology

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwab099· OSTI ID:1903951

Yamada, Michiko ^[1]; Furukawa, Kyoji ^[1]; Tatsukawa, Yoshimi ^[1]; Marumo, Keiko ^[1]; Funamoto, Sachiyo ^[1]; Sakata, Ritsu ^[1]; Ozasa, Kotaro ^[1]; Cullings, Harry M. ^[1]; Preston, Dale L. ^[2]; Kurttio, Paivi ^[3]

Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), Hiroshima (Japan)
HiroSoft International Corporation, Eureka, CA (United States)
Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, Helsinki (Finland)

From 1948 to 1954, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission conducted a study of pregnancy outcomes among births to atomic bomb survivors (Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan) who had received radiation doses ranging from 0 Gy to near-lethal levels. Past reports (1956, 1981, and 1990) on the cohort did not identify significant associations of radiation exposure with untoward pregnancy outcomes, such as major congenital malformations, stillbirths, or neonatal deaths, individually or in aggregate. We reexamined the risk of major congenital malformations and perinatal deaths in the children of atomic bomb survivors (n = 71,603) using fully reconstructed data to minimize the potential for bias, using refined estimates of the gonadal dose from Dosimetry System 2002 and refined analytical methods for characterizing dose-response relationships. The analyses showed that parental exposure to radiation was associated with increased risk of major congenital malformations and perinatal death, but the estimates were imprecise for direct radiation effects, and most were not statistically significant. Nonetheless, the uniformly positive estimates for untoward pregnancy outcomes among children of both maternal and paternal survivors are useful for risk assessment purposes, although extending them to populations other than the atomic bomb survivors comes with uncertainty as to generalizability.

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Research Organization:: Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), Hiroshima (Japan); HiroSoft International Corporation, Eureka, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare

OSTI ID:: 1903951

Journal Information:: American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 190, Issue 11; ISSN 0002-9262

Publisher:: Oxford University PressCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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