Breastfeeding and early infection in the aetiology of childhood leukaemia in Down syndrome

J Flores-Lujano, M L Perez-Saldivar, E M Fuentes-Pananá, C Gorodezky, R Bernaldez-Rios, M A Del Campo-Martinez, A Martinez-Avalos, A Medina-Sanson, R Paredes-Aguilera, J De Diego-Flores Chapa, V Bolea-Murga, M C Rodriguez-Zepeda, R Rivera-Luna, M A Palomo-Colli, L Romero-Guzman, P Perez-Vera, M Alvarado-Ibarra, F Salamanca-Gómez, A Fajardo-Gutierrez and J M Mejía-Aranguré

British Journal of Cancer (2009) 101, 860–864.

Background: For a child to develop acute leukaemia (AL), environmental exposure may not be sufficient: interaction with a susceptibility factor to the disease, such as Down syndrome (DS), may also be necessary. We assessed whether breastfeeding and early infection were associated with the risk of developing AL in children with DS.

Conclusion: We found that breastfeeding was a protective factor for developing AL and ALL, and during the first year of life, infections requiring hospitalisation were related to a risk for developing the disease in those children with DS >6 years of age. These data do not support the Greaves’s hypothesis of early infection being protective for developing ALL.

A cikk kivonata a British Journal of Cancer oldalán olvasható.

British Journal of Cancer főoldal