Epidemiological features of Wilms' tumor: results of the National Wilms' Tumor Study

Nearly 2,000 children with Wilm's tumor registered in a national clinical trial during 1969-81 showed high rates of aniridia, hemihypertrophy, cryptorchidism, hypospadias, and other genitourinary anomalies. Patients with bilateral disease, who constituted 5% of the total, had younger ages at diagnosis and an increased incidence of congenital anomalies and renal blastemal rests. Those with multicentric unilateral lesions had more blastemal rests but were otherwise indistinguishable from the unicentric cases. The 20 familial cases had none of the features usually associated with genetic tumors: neither younger ages nor an increase in bilaterality nor associated congenital anomalies. These observations suggest that the fraction of Wilm's tumors that is due to an inherited mutation may be substantially smaller than previously supposed and support the concept that the disease arises from a variety of pathogenetic pathways.