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Maternal pregnancy loss, birth characteristics, and childhood leukemia (United States)
Xiaomei Ma1, Catherine Metayer, Monique B Does
1Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, 60 College St., New Haven, CT 06520-8034, USA. xiaomei.ma@yale.edu
Objective:
The authors evaluated the relation between maternal pregnancy loss, birth characteristics, and childhood leukemia in the Northern California Childhood Leukemia Study.
Methods:
Incident cases of childhood leukemia (age 0-14 years) were rapidly ascertained, and controls were randomly selected from birth records and individually matched to cases. A total of 366 cases [313 acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 53 acute myeloid leukemia (AML)] and 460 controls were included in this analysis. The biological mothers of all subjects provided detailed reproductive history and birth characteristics of the index children during a personal interview. Odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated using conditional logistic regression. Data on maternal pregnancy loss and birth characteristics were also available from the birth certificates of 96.3% of all subjects.
Results:
History of miscarriage was associated with a significantly increased risk of AML (OR = 2.94, 95% CI: 1.03, 8.34), but not ALL. Neither birth weight, birth order, or parental ages appeared to be an important predictor of the risk of ALL or AML. A comparison between data from two different sources (interview versus birth certificate) indicated good reproducibility and offered some evidence against recall bias.
Conclusion:
Maternal history of miscarriage is associated with an increased risk of childhood AML.
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