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According to a new study on cancers in childhood, babies who are born to an older mother have a higher risk for developing many of the cancers that occur during childhood.
"Our finding shows that although the absolute risk is low, advancing maternal age may be a factor and explain why, after other factors are adjusted for, some children get cancer," said Logan Spector, professor of paediatrics, University of Minnesota (U-M).
Currently, about one in 435 children under 15 years in the US gets cancer. They include leukaemia, lymphoma, central nervous system tumour, neuroblastoma, Wilms' tumour, bone cancer and soft tissue sarcoma.
For this population-based case-control study, Spector and colleagues used information from birth registry records in New York, Washington, Minnesota, Texas, and California.
The study included the records of 17,672 children in those states diagnosed with cancer at ages 0-14 years between 1980 and 2004 and 57,966 children not diagnosed with cancer.
"We saw that the risk of seven of the 10 most common childhood cancers increased slightly, about seven to 10 percent, with every five-year increase in maternal age," Spector said.
The researchers noted the father's age did not seem to matter once the mother's age was taken into account.
Spector believes more research needs to be done on why the risk for childhood cancer increases with advancing maternal age, said a U-M release.
Some of the possible explanations could be age-related changes in hormonal levels during pregnancy and alterations in DNA markings in eggs that can be transmitted to the offspring.
The results were published in the July issue of Epidemiology.
