Allergy and risk of childhood leukaemia: Results from the UKCCS

作者：Hughes Ann M; Lightfoot Tracy; Simpson Jill; Ansell Pat; McKinney Patricia A; Kinsey Sally E; Mitchell Christopher D; Eden Tim O B; Greaves Mel; Roman Eve^*

来源：International Journal of Cancer, 2007, 121(4): 819-824.

DOI：10.1002/ijc.22702

• child
• allergy
• leukaemia
• lymphoblastic
• acute
• case-control

We investigated the relationship between childhood leukaemia and preceding history of allergy. A nationwide case-control study of childhood cancers was conducted in the United Kingdom with population-based sampling of cases (n=839) and controls (n=1,337), matched on age, sex and region of residence. Information about clinically diagnosed allergies was obtained from primary care records. More than a third of subjects had at least one allergy diagnosed prior to leukaemia diagnosis (cases) or pseudo-diagnosis (controls). For both total acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and common-ALL/precursor B-cell ALL (c-ALL), a history of eczema was associated with a 30% significant reduction in risk: the odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were 0.70 (0.51-0.97) and 0.68 (0.48-0.98), respectively. Similar associations were observed for hayfever (OR=0.47; 95% CI: 0.26-0.85 and OR=0.62; 95% CI: 0.33-1.16 for ALL and c-ALL, respectively). No such patterns were seen either for asthma and ALL, or for any allergy and acute myeloid leukaemia. A comparative analysis of primary care records with parents recall of allergy revealed only moderate agreement with contemporaneous clinical diagnoses for both cases and controls-confirming the unreliability of parental report at interview. Our finding of a reciprocal relationship between allergy and ALL in children is compatible with the hypothesis that a dysregulated immune response is a critical determinant of childhood ALL.

• 出版日期2007-8-15