Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Risk factors
By Mayo Clinic staffUsually, there are no clear risk factors present in children who develop Wilms' tumor; however, the following risk factors may make the disorder more likely to occur:
- Sex. Girls are slightly more likely to develop Wilms' tumor than are boys.
- Race. Black children have a slightly higher risk of developing Wilms'. Asian-Americans appear to have a lower risk.
- Family history. If someone in your child's family has had Wilms' tumor, then your child has a slightly increased risk of developing the disease.
Wilms' tumor occurs more frequently in children with certain abnormalities present at birth, including:
- Aniridia. In this rare condition the iris — the membrane that gives the eye its color and controls the amount of light entering the eye — forms only partially or not at all.
- Hemihypertrophy. This abnormality occurs when one side of the body is noticeably larger than the other side.
- Undescended testicles. One or both testicles fail to descend into the scrotum (cryptorchidism).
- Hypospadias. The urinary (urethral) opening is not at the tip of the penis, but is on the underside.
Wilms' tumor can occur as part of rare syndromes, including:
- WAGR syndrome. This syndrome includes Wilms' tumor, aniridia, abnormalities of the genitals and urinary system, and mental retardation.
- Denys-Drash syndrome. This syndrome includes Wilms' tumor, kidney disease and male pseudohermaphroditism, in which a boy is born with undeveloped genitalia and undescended testicles.
- Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome. Symptoms of this syndrome are omphalocele — the abdomen fails to close around the base of the umbilical cord and abdominal organs protrude into the base of the cord — a large tongue (macroglossia) and enlarged internal organs.
- Detailed guide: Wilms' tumor. American Cancer Society. http://documents.cancer.org/106.00/106.00.pdf. Accessed July 22, 2009.
- Maloney K, et al. Neoplastic disease. In: Hay WW, et al. Current Diagnosis and Treatment: Pediatrics. 19th edition. New York, N.Y.: McGraw-Hill Medical; 2009. http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aID=3407273. Accessed July 24, 2009.
- Wilms' tumor and other childhood kidney tumors (health professional version). National Cancer Institute. Accessed July 22, 2009.
- Chintagumpala M. Treatment and prognosis of Wilms' tumor. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed July 10, 2009.
