Genetic polymorphisms in adaptive immunity genes and childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Background: Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has been hypothesized to have an infection- and immune-related etiology. The lack of immune priming in early childhood may result in abnormal immune responses to infections later in life and increase ALL risk.

Methods: The current analyses examined the association between childhood ALL and 208 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of 29 adaptive immune function genes among 377 ALL cases and 448 healthy controls.

Breastfeeding and the risk of childhood leukemia: a meta-analysis.

Objective: The authors used a meta-analytic technique to (1) quantify the evidence of an association between duration of breastfeeding and risk of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) or acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML), (2) assess the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on any such associations, and (3) discuss the implications of these findings for the evaluation of whether breastfeeding reduces the risk of childhood leukemia.

Methods: A fixed effects model was employed to systematically combine the results of 14 case-control studies addressing the effect of short-term (< or = 6 months) and long-term (>6 months) breastfeeding on the risk of childhood ALL and/or AML. Subgroup analyses of studies that did and did not adjust for SES were also performed.